U.S. Ambassador Virginia Palmer hands over books to Minister of Education Hon. Yaw Adutwum in Accra.
The United States Ambassador to Ghana, Virginia Palmer, joined the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum to mark the handing over of 3.7 million additional Basic 1 to Basic 3 English teaching and learning materials, including supplementary readers to the Ministry for Education.
The materials will reach over 11,000 schools that have not already received the materials. The materials are designed to enable teachers to deliver engaging and effective reading lessons and improve pupils’ ability to read.
Ambassador Palmer said, “The U.S. Government is pleased to support the Ministry of Education and its agencies in providing 3.7 million books to over 11,000 schools across Ghana. We are delighted that these materials were developed here in Ghana by Ghanaian writers, illustrators, designers, and editors, making them both relevant and engaging for students.
Printing these books in Ghana also created dozens of jobs and contributes to prosperity in the United States and Ghana.”
Through the Partnership for Education program, the U.S. government has increased the availability of quality materials in schools to improve teaching and learning and provided more than 10 million learning materials to Ghana since 2014.
The materials include Teacher Guides, Pupils Books, Supplementary Leveled Readers, and classroom materials including Alphabet Cards and Word Cards in English, all aligned to the new curriculum, for B1, B2 and B3 grade levels. The book donation represents a $5 million dollar investment, a part of the larger, nearly $100 million overall U.S. investment in education in Ghana over the past eight years.
The collaboration between USAID and Ghana’s Ministry of Education is one of the key partnerships between the United States and Ghana and supports the early grade reading of learners in Ghana.
Since 2014, over 70,000 teachers, headteachers, and curriculum leads, have been trained and reached over 750,000 pupils. The latest donation will bring the number of schools supported from 7,200 to over 16,000 across Ghana.