Literacy and Education

Literacy

Literacy refers to the ability to read and write in any language with understanding. The ability to read and write is a key factor for access and utilization of information to enhance socio-economic development.

Table 3.9 shows the percentage distribution of the Builsa South District population age aged 11 years and older by sex, age and literacy status.

From the table, about 15974 are non-literates. The 65 years and over age group recorded the highest number (2,146) of people who are not literates. Also, the table indicates that a total number of 8,931are literates, 75.0 percent are literate in English only and 21.3 percent in English and Ghanaian language only. The data also reveal that male literates are more (4,427) than their female (261) counterparts. However, 78.8 percent of females are literate in English only as compared with 71.2 percent of the males. It is also clear that 24.5 percent of males are literate in English and Ghanaian languages while 18.1 percent are females.

Education

From Figure 3.2, it observable that, majority of the population 3 years and older have never attended school. Almost equal proportion of male and female have never attended school. However, more males than females have attended school in the past, while more females than males are attending school now.

Table 3.10 depicts population aged 3 years and older by level of education, school attendance and sex. Full time education is asked of persons aged three years and older in the 2010 PHC. From Table 3.8, the number of persons aged three years and older currently attending school is 11,672 and attended school in the past is 3,619, this means that about 34.8 percent of the total population of the district are currently attending school while 10.8 percent of the district population attended school in the past.

The majority of those who are currently attending school are in primary school (56.0%), followed by JHS (14.6%), nursery (12.9%) and Kindergarten (9.6%). Furthermore, the majority of those who attended school in the past in the district completed primary school (52.5%), junior high school or junior secondary school (17.0%) and senior secondary school (12.0%).