The first ever Islamic Education Unit (IEU) of the Ghana Education Service Annual General Meeting was last Friday held in Accra.
It was on the theme “Re-positioning the IEU for effective teaching and learning in Islamic schools in Ghana.”
It was organised by the unit in collaboration with the Baraka Policy Institute (BPI), a social research think tank.
In attendance were the 16 Regional Managers of the IEU, who presented reports of their activities enumerating challenges affecting teaching and learning as inadequate logistics for supervision and monitoring, poor infrastructure, encroachment of school lands, inadequate budgetary allocation to the unit, inadequate furniture and lack of continuous education for Arabic teachers, to mention but a few.
Also present were members of the National Council of the Islamic Education Unit.
The Executive Secretary of the IEU, Rear Admiral Mohammed Muniru Tahiru (retd), said the unit had designated 33 selected Islamic education institutions across the country under the IEU Targeted Education Improvement Programme (TEIP), as model schools, to improve teaching and learning outcomes in the schools.
The executive director stressed on the need to improve the learning of Arabic language in Islamic education institutions by calling on the government to give its support to the teaching of Arabic language.
Rear Admiral (retd) Tahiru said the unit had put in places structures to ensure effective supervision across the country, to improve teaching and learning.
The Executive Director of the BPI, Dr Harun Zagoon- Sayeed, said quality education, ownership and funding were the major challenges facing the IEU, and called on the Muslim community to help improve education delivery in the country.
Dr Zagoon-Sayeed stressed on the need to improve quality of education in the Muslim community, adding “once we are united and focused on our vision we can do things on our own.”
He expressed concern over the patronising of sports, betting among children in the Muslim community at the neglect of their education, and called on the Muslim community to address the problem.
“Such a social force against child education must be checked in order to ensure that it does not derail our collective efforts toward Sustainable Development Goal 4,” he added.
The General Manager of the IEU, Abdul- Karim Bapuni commended the BPI for its support in Islamic education in the country.
BY SALIFU ABDUL-RAHAMAN
