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Dr Kwabena Bempah Tandoh, Deputy Director General of Ghana Education Service in charge of Quality and Access has called on parents to join in the education of their wards.

Dr Tandoh, who visited some basic schools in the Tema Metropolis to mark this year’s “My first day at school” programme, indicated that there would be severe consequences if parents failed to fully participate in the education of their children.

He noted that education was a tripod that had the school, parents and students representing each leg adding that each must play their role well to sustain it.

“If you don’t join us, the school won’t work, ”he stressed, adding that parents should not only wait till it is “our day” before they visited schools.

He said whereas the students were there to learn, and teachers and school administration to impart and run the school respectively, parents also had a responsibility to support their children with the little things the children needed.

He encouraged parents to ask the needed questions and share relevant information on their wards with teachers for effective collaboration and training of the child.

Touching on infrastructure, he said government raised a bond of 1.5 billion US Dollars for the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFUND) for the provision of infrastructure with the first released focusing on senior high school infrastructure to support the free SHS policy.

The second release, he noted, would be geared towards providing infrastructure for the universities to adequately prepare towards the intake of large numbers of students from the free SHS.

Dr Tandoh further said the remaining one-third would also go into basic school infrastructure saying “nobody will behave as an ostrich and say we don’t have infrastructure problems but government is working on it.”

He urged school managements to look at their maintenance cultures and do small repairs instead of waiting for the infrastructure to deteriorate before asking for huge amounts of money to repair.

The Deputy Director General, who was accompanied by the Deputy Director Human Resource at the GES, Tema Metropolitan Chief Executive, Mr Felix Nii Anang La and other officials, visited the Naval Base Basic School and the Tema Manhean Anglican Basic School.

He said it was important to welcome the children, most of whom were now starting school, to encourage and show them love as a motivation to stay in school.