Right to Know Education Project takes off

Page 11
August 17, 2009

THE Right to Know, Right to Education Project, a child's right initiative to ensure that children obtain quality basic education and acquire the means to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty is being implemented in the country.
The five-year project is being operated in seven African countries and aims at establishing a continental standard on the right to quality basic education, right to access to information established in legal framework, and empower care-givers to participate meaningfully in their children's education.
The project is a partnership between Idasa, South Africa and the seven African countries. The Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC) is partnering Idasa to implement the project in Ghana.
It aims at creating an enabling space for people in seven key, low income African societies to claim their “right to know” by promoting the child’s right to quality basic education through access to information and participatory, rights-based budget process.
"This strategic intervention will enhance responsive and accountable governance, enabling poor children to claim their right to quality basic education, resulting in better skilled, economically active citizens who are better able to lift themselves out of poverty. By promoting the Right to Know, the proposed programme will help deliver quality basic education, thus alleviating poverty in Africa," it said.
In Ghana the project will be implemented at two levels; national and local level. National level strategies and activities will target policy makers and other stakeholders including CSOs with a major focus on advocacy for a legal framework on the right to access to information and the establishment of a transparent and participatory budget processes.
The focus at the local level will be pro-poor parents and their effective participation in school governance. School Management Committees/Parent Teacher Associations (SMC/PTA’s) are the local representatives of parents in Ghana; they will be the focus of Ghana’s parental participation in school governance.
Thirty communities from the Western, Central and Greater Accra Regions would be selected as project communities where the project would be implemented at the local level. Ten communities would be selected in each region.
The criteria for selection included pro-poor communities that have low income levels with a more than 70 per cent of population earning less than a dollar a day. The communities should preferably be in farming/fishing/coastal and forest/cocoa growing areas respectively.
There should also be the presence of at least one public basic school and a PTA in the community, among other things.