USAID Distributes Over 3 Million Books to Ghanaian Schools

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has over the last three years distributed more than three million books to primary schools in Ghana.

The move forms part of implementation of a 78-million dollar USAID Learning Project in the country which has also facilitated the training of over 10,000 Ghanaian teachers to help teach children using the mother language.

Mr Robert Jackson, the US Ambassador to Ghana made this known when he visited Bishop Primary School in the Upper West regional capital, Wa, to inspect how the children were coping with lessons.

The Ambassador had personal interaction with the kids to help him ascertain whether the children really grasped the lessons taught them by their teachers.

“I personally was very impacted by a book that I read at the eighth grade and as a former teacher, I feel strongly about reading and so I wanted to come to this school to see how our reading programme is going”, he said.

“The children are learning in their own language and this will give them a great foundation to learn English and other languages as time goes on, because being able to sound up words in Dagaare will allow them to sound up the words in any other language”, he added.

Mr Jackson expressed confidence that based on what he witnessed, the children would do well when they get to second and fourth grades.

‘After tests, the results would improve because of the learning capability.’

The learning project was introduced in Ghana because of poor reading performance at the Kindergarten (KG) to primary two levels countrywide.

The USAID Learning Project has assisted in producing materials in the 11 approved Ghanaian languages across the country.

The development agency is also training more than 10,000 teachers to use the over three million books circulated to teach the children using their mother tongues.

Source: GNA