In its unwitting desire to defend the gaffe committed by Second Lady Matilda Amissah-Arthur last week, the Ghana Education Service revealed that it supplied 82,391 boxes of chalk to the Eastern Region in March this year, that is five months ago. Now emerging think tank Critical Thinkers have revealed that this would mean that each class room in the Eastern Region had only one box of chalk to with over a period of five months.
In a letter fired to the Daily Searchlight offering a reasoned basis for its conclusions, Critical Thinkers, said that the statement issued by the GES rather vindicates the statement that there is truly lack of chalk in the classrooms as the headmistress in the school at Kukurantumi said.
Giving the analysis, Critical Thinkers stated that the total number of MMDAs in Eastern Region number 26. They said that if the total boxes of chalk supplied (since March) is 82,391 boxes, the distribution would be that each district would receive 3,169 boxes of chalk (82,391/26 = 3,169).
“That is, East Akim municipality (where Kukurantumi is located) got 3,169 boxes of chalk since March 2015,” the group said. They said that the total number of Public Basic schools in East Akim is 240, adding that if the boxes of chalk were to be evenly distributed, each school would get 13 boxes of chalk (3169/240=13).
“That is each school in the district had 13 boxes of chalk,” the group said. The group stated that the number of classes in each basic school was 11, that is kindergarten 1, kindergarten 2, Primary 1-6 and JHS3.
This means that each class, for the period of five months since March, had only 12 boxes of chalk available to it. The distribution to classes (if evenly) = 13/11=1.2 That is each class got 1 box and 2 pieces of chalk,” the group said, adding that it is therefore clear from the above analysis that, I box of chalk could not be enough for a class (where 6 to 9 subjects are taught) for a period of 5 months.
Indeed, this truly shows that, there is no chalk in Ghana’s Public Schools!!!” the group said in a press release signed by Mr. Ben Sackey Enoch. The group said that in the attempt by the Ghana Education Service to defend the indefensible, the institution has rather justified the inadequacy of chalk by its mention of the provision of some chalks to schools in the Eastern region since March this year by government.
To support their claim in their bid to defend this indefensible, they said 82,391 boxes of chalk were supplied to the Eastern regional directorate of the Ghana Education Service in March 2015 by government which according to them, those chalks was meant to cover the several schools in the region from that time till now. Critical Thinkers said that this defence rather vindicates the headmistress who requested for basic necessities of teaching and learning from the government some days ago when the School lady, Mrs. Amissah visited the school.
“In fact, this revelation justifies the Kukurantumi headmistress’ demand for chalk as 82,391 boxes of chalk supplied some five months ago, could not serve the entire schools in the region up to this period. The interest of School children must be paramount to government than playing cheap politics with our educational system and also the GES should next time not try to defend the indefensible at the expense of the future of school children again,” the statement said.
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