“Spelling Bee”, has over the years become a household name among pupils in basic schools due to its impact to boost children’s ability to command the English language as it is used as a medium of communication to interact fluently with their friends and colleagues in Ghana and other English speaking countries.     

The three-year partnership, which would begin in March this year, is expected to help to deepen educational ideas, especially in the “Spelling Bee” competition to ensure that selected public schools within the Ashanti Region benefited from the English literacy programme.

Dr Thomas Agyarko Poku, Executive Director, of the Otumfuo Charity Foundation, said the focus of the Foundation is to help improve literacy and education in general, among Ghanaian children.

He said the Foundation is happy to work with the YEF to unleash the hidden talents of young people, especially those in less endowed schools.

Dr Agyarko Poku said the basis to a brighter secondary education was hinged on a solid foundation laid for children at the basic school level and this included good spelling and writing of the English vocabulary.

He said the project is going to work closely with the Ghana Education Service to ensure that the “Spelling Bee” competition is conducted at the local, district and regional levels, whiles at the same time ensuring that the competition was made part of the teaching and learning schemes in rural communities.

Mr Evans Nii Teiko, Board Chairman for YEF, said the vision of the Foundation is to bridge the yawning literacy gap levels among children in Ghanaian schools.

He said about 12,000 school children have over the years benefited from their flagship literacy training programme.

He said the programmes did not aim to replace the mother tongue with the English language but to help children to express themselves better and interact freely with other people from English speaking counterparts.