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A report by the World Bank on Ghana�s educational system has identified the high rate of teacher absenteeism as a major problem in the educational sector. The report, titled Education in Ghana: Improving Equity, Efficiency and Accountability of Education Service Delivery, said absenteeism is more common in rural schools, with a seeming link to with higher occurrences of a poor work environment and poor teacher morale. It was released on February 23, 2011. According to the report, teachers in Tunisia and Morocco miss 11.6 days and 13.4 days a year, while teachers in Ghana miss 43 days. Among the main underlying reasons for the high absentee rate are lack of supervision, sickness/medical care, collection of salary at a bank located at a distance, and frequent funeral attendance. Other reasons are long distances to school, religious practices (for instance, Friday prayers among Muslim teachers), schools lacking facilities, especially sanitation: toilets and potable water, schools located far from lorry/bus stations and healthcare facilities, and rural teachers supplementing their income by engaging in activities related to farming. The World Bank report also revealed that less than a third of primary school children reach proficiency levels in English or in Mathematics, according to the National Education Assessment tests of 2005, 2007 and 2009. These tests were conducted on a nationally representative random sample of 3.5 percent of Ghana�s primary schools. The 2009 results for Primary 3 showed 20 percent of students are proficient in English and 25.2 percent in Math (improvements in both subjects relative to 2005 results). For Primary 6, the results were 35.6 percent proficient in English and 13.8 percent in Math (improvements in both subjects compared to 2005 results). This World Bank report comes on the back of a similar one by the Ghana Education Service which indicated that sixty-four per cent of pupils across the country cannot read and write. Analysing the findings on the Citi Breakfast Show of Tuesday May 17, 2011, the National Coordinator of the Ghana National Educational Campaign Coalition (GNECC) Lesley Tettey, said the report was a true reflection of events on the ground, adding that �Ghana has a problem as far as quality or a learning outcome of education is concerned�. He pointed out, however, that the quest to provide quality education must be addressed holistically, with special emphasis on a number of key areas. One of such is the pupil:teacher ratio, currently around 32 pupils per teacher, �which is the national average�. �When you want to look at it in terms of quality then you have to look at the trained teacher component. We have another indicator which we call the Pupil:Trained Teacher Ratio and this tells you there are big problems� he said. �For instance in the Northern regions, the Ratio ranges between 150 � 200 pupils per teacher. The Coalition did a study just in February of 2010. Regions like Volta and Brong Ahafo have similar high pupil teacher ratio�. The Acting Deputy Director General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) in charge of Basic Education, Stephen Adu, told Citi News in an earlier interview the GES report was intended to inform Ghanaians about the low level of education in the country, and create the necessarily will on the part of the citizenry to help provide quality education. Mr Tettey commended the GES for the research, but called on the Service to do more. �If research is showing us that one of the core input resource factors is teachers, then there is the need for urgent measures to look at the deployment of teachers and to look at solving the problem of time-on-task. �Teachers who live in rural areas have genuine concerns and their issues should be looked at. In terms of targeting, we must be able to target incentives and those who need incentives especially in the deprived communities should get the incentives so they can work. Those who are not working and have been absenting themselves, there must be systems to monitor and supervise them to ensure that people don�t do that�, he advised. Mr. Tettey called on the relevant authorities to create the right atmosphere to attract the right caliber of persons into the teaching profession.