The demise of a teacher at Labaldo kindergarten in the Saboba District in the Northern Region of Ghana has left the school abandoned since 2013. This has compelled pupils between the ages of four and ten to trek over six kilometres to access kindergarten education in a nearby village.

The school which was established in the 80s by the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and was later taken over by the government has remained the only school in the community. After the demise of the only teacher in the school in 2013, the school has been abandoned widening the educational gap between the pupils in the community and their counterparts elsewhere.

Weaker children missing out on education

Pupils who are strong enough to walk the long distance are the only ones left to trek the over six kilometres journey to access the nearby school, however, the weak ones whose parents are not able to provide means for them give up on the education of those that are left behind.

The condition of the three-unit mud classroom block would not have been difficult to accommodate the pupils if it was a functioning school serving the community.

According to sources, it has become an additional school to the Roman Catholic Primary School which has four teachers taking care of six classes making it difficult to get Labaldo kindergarten school functional again. The Sanguli Roman Catholic Primary School is also in a sorry state which the head teacher, Thomas Nambadak, has bemoaned and attributes the difficulty to get the Labaldo school functioning.

The headteacher has admitted that the Sanguli Roman Catholic primary school has a teacher deficit, which makes it cumbersome to manage the two joint combined schools.

Community calling on the government

The children of Labaldo are deprived of the right to an education, leaving their future in danger and this needs urgent intervention.

The past teacher expressed concern and said several complaints have been made both oral and formal to the appropriate authority in charge of early childhood education but has not yet yielded a positive result.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal four enrolled in 2015 in about 190 countries across the world, seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all countries by 2030.

Yet it is questionable if Ghana will achieve the target of the Sustainable Development Goal four of the United Nations by 2030.

The community is calling on the government, non-governmental organisations and other humanitarian bodies to intervene to get their children back to school.