The acting Volta Regional Director of Education, Marian Jemima Akua Adzroe has called on Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) operating in the region to deepen their support for education, particularly at the basic and secondary school levels.

She said stronger collaboration between NGOs and the Ghana Education Service (GES) was essential to sustaining gains made in the education sector and ensuring that every child in the Volta Region had access to quality education.

Mrs Adzroe made the call in her welcome address at an engagement meeting between the Volta Regional Directorate of Education and NGOs operating in the region.

She expressed appreciation to the organisations for their contribution to educational development through resource mobilisation, infrastructure provision, learning materials and targeted interventions for vulnerable children.

According to her, NGOs play a significant role in bridging critical gaps in educational delivery, particularly in hard-to-reach communities across the region.

“The meeting was organised to strengthen collaboration between the GES and NGOs by developing a clearer understanding of their respective areas of intervention, geographical coverage, programmes and measurable impact,” she said.

Mrs Adzroe explained that the exercise would also help the Directorate identify areas where NGO interventions could be better coordinated to prevent duplication and ensure that underserved districts received the needed support.

She further urged NGOs to work closely with the Regional and District Education Directorates throughout the life cycle of their projects.

She described the regional and district education officers as a critical “middle tier” in the implementation of educational policies, saying their involvement from project inception through implementation and monitoring was necessary for sustainability.

“When NGOs work in isolation from district and regional officers, projects often suffer from duplication, administrative friction or abrupt collapse once funding cycles end,” she cautioned.

Mrs Adzroe said involving district directors, frontline supervisors and regional unit heads would help promote institutional ownership, sustainability and continuity of projects beyond the period of external funding.

The acting regional director also appealed to NGOs to support the sustainability of ongoing reforms in secondary education.

She said Ghana’s secondary education system was undergoing significant transformation under the New Secondary Education Reform with emphasis on 21st-century skills, critical thinking and technical competencies.

However, she noted that sustaining the reforms required substantial financial and technical resources, particularly as a major donor supporting secondary education was winding down its primary funding phase.

She therefore called on development partners and NGOs to help consolidate the gains achieved under the reforms and prevent schools from losing momentum as donor funding declined.

Mrs Adzroe, however, stressed that interventions should not focus solely on secondary education, urging NGOs to devote greater attention to early childhood, primary and Junior High School education.

“The successful implementation of the Standard-Based Curriculum required continuous teacher capacity building, appropriate teaching and learning materials, and targeted interventions in foundational literacy and numeracy,” she stressed.

“A weak foundation at the primary level directly compromises secondary and tertiary success,” she said, emphasising the need for sustained investment in basic education.

She urged NGOs to align their programmes with national GES policies and regional education priorities to maximise the impact of resources committed to the sector.

Mrs Adzroe added that the ultimate objective of the engagement was to establish a robust, transparent and data-driven partnership framework that would ensure that interventions by civil society organisations complemented government efforts.

She expressed the hope that through closer collaboration, the GES and its development partners could ensure that no child in the Volta Region was left behind from kindergarten through Senior High Schools.

The NGOs also assured the regional education directorate of their commitment and readiness to support provide quality education, improved infrastructure and to create a conducive learning environment for all schools across the region.

They appealed to the stakeholders and communities to work in collaboration with them to achieve their goals to improve quality education in the region .