The Ministry of Education, last Thursday presented a number of buses to selected senior high and technical schools (SHSs and SHTSs) across the country.

The presentation of 60-seater Golden Dragon buses numbering 120 is the second phase of the government’s programme to provide the more than 730 SHSs/SHTSs with high occupancy buses to improve mobility of students.

So far more than 350 schools have taken delivery of their buses and more schools are scheduled to benefit in the third phase in the first quarter of the year.

Making the presentation, the Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, said he was honoured to do the presentation on behalf of the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

He said the handover of the buses was in fulfilment of the government’s commitment to ensure that the education sector was adequately resourced to deliver improved learning outcomes.

Dr Prempeh said a number of vehicles and motorcycles had already been distributed to Regional Directors of Education, Circuit Supervisors and various senior high schools, in a bid to support education delivery.

He explained that the criterion for benefitting from the distribution of the new buses was that the school should not have been a beneficiary of the 2016 distribution of buses to schools by the government.

The Minister urged the various school heads who had been given the responsibility for these vehicles to ensure that they were taken good care of so that they could serve the purpose for which they were imported.

He reiterated that the Government would continue to invest in the frontline managers of the country’s educational institutions because they were central to the education reforms that the Ministry sought to pursue.

Touching on learning outcomes, Dr Prempeh said the only difference between what were classified as good and bad schools was the issue of discipline on campus.

He said if heads and managers of the country’s schools were to enforce and instill discipline, the students would learn to study and this would invariably lead to improved positive learning outcomes.

Dr Prempeh, therefore, charged headteachers and school managers to focus on enforcing discipline among students in order to improve learning outcomes.