Pre-Tertiary Education in Ghana

The Challenges of Ghana’s Educational System – SomeReflections

By Dr Kwesi Atta Sakyi 6thJuly 2015

Do names of great Ghanaians, dead and alive, such as these,ring a bell and resonate with you? Dr Anton Wilhelm Amo (d),Dr R.G. Armattoe (d), Sekyi brothers from Adisadel(d), PhilipQuarcoo (d), Ken Dadzie (d), Dr Ave Kludze, Dr Kofi Annan,Dr Nii Quaynor, Dr James Kwegyir Aggrey (d), Dr IsaiahBlankson, Dr T.A. Mensah, Prof Francis Kofi Ampaney Allotey,Tsatsu Tsikata, Dr Kwame Appiah, Casely Hayford, Mr L.A.Adu, Prof Easmon, Mr A. Konuah, Mr S. Mfodwo, Mr E.A. Edzii,Mr Francis Selormey, Mr G. Abruquah, Mr Amu Djoleto, Mrs EfuaSutherland, Dr Jawa. Apronti, Prof Kwami,

Magnus Sampson, Dr De Graft Johnson, Dr Mawusi Dake(d), DrAshitey Trebi-Ollennu, Prof N.A. Addo, Mr N.A. Quao, Dr E.A.Debrah, Mr Annancy, Mr Ohene Djan, Dr Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, Prof Lade Worsonu, Prof Joseph Orleans MendsPobee(d), Prof Benning, Prof A. Nabilla, Dr J.B. Danquah(d),Dr Kwame Nkrumah(d), Sir Arko Korsah(d), Justice Apaloo,Justice Nii Amaah Ollennu, Prof Ofosu-Armaah, Prof K.Abrahams,

Ekem Ferguson (d), Kofi Antobam (d), Prof Kwamina Bentsi-Enchil (d), Col Ebenezer Ghartey, Mr J.B. Arkorful (d), DrEphraim Amu (d), E.N. Omaboe, Prof K.B. Asante, DrMagbonlurin, Brig Gen Nunoo-Mensah, Brig Kattah, Captain KojoTsikata, Dr Oti Boateng, Cardinal Kojo Turkson, Rev Dr B.A.Dadson, Mr J.A. Annobil, Rev Gaddiel Acquaah, Rev C.F.C Grant,Rev A.B. Dickson, Rev Thomas Wallace Koomson, Mr B.A.Bartels, Mr Adu Ampomah, Rev Anaman, Rev Parker,

Rev Ato Ahumah, Robert Owusu, Kwame Amamoo, Rev Kojo Halm (d),Vincent Assiseh, John Hammond (d), Elizabeth Ohene, OfeibeaQuist Arcton, Dr Alex Quaison Sackey (d), Ben Dotse Marlor,Komla Dumor (d), Kofi Dumoga, Ben Ephson, Mike Eghan, E.T.Mensah, A.B. Crentsil, C.K. Mann, Pat Thomas, Kwabena Ampadu,

Dr K.A. Busia (d), Dr Leticia Obeng, Dr Ama Ata Aidoo, JusticeAnnie Jiagge, Prof Baeta, Mrs Chenery-Hesse, Dr FrimpongAnsah, Prof K.B. Dickson (d), Prof Dzobo, B.A. Bentum, JohnTettehgah, R.T. Madjitey, Prof Atta Annan Mensah (d), ProfKwesi Dickson (d), Prof Kwasi Gaisie(d), Prof Adzei Bekoe,Prof Yarney Ewusi, Prof Amuasi, Prof Adu Boahen(d), FatherF.K.Buah, Prof Paul Ansah(d), Prof Kojo Ewusi, Maj GenErskine,

Prof Kwabena Nketiah, Prof Andam, Dr Andah, Prof Acheampong,Prof Song Sore, Dr Erbynn, Prof Alex Adum Kwapong (d), KofiGhanaba, Prof B.A.Dadson, Prof. George Benneh, Prof Ivan AddaeMensah, Prof Felix Konotey Ahulu, Prof Kofi Nti, ProfChinebuah, Prof Amonoo-Niezer, Prof Abbiw Jackson, Prof EvansAnfom, Prof R.P. Baffour, Prof B.A. Boateng, Prof Twumasi,Prof Kofi Asare Poku, Mr Tregido, Kofi Drah, Dr Kwame Ninsin,among others.

Some of the aforementioned were or are inventors, scientists,physicists, mathematicians, composers, theologians, academics,administrators, linguists, writers, journalists, and so on ofinternational acclaim and repute.

If you are not familiar with any of these people and theirexploits, I implore you to google them to have a glimpse ofhow far we have come as a nation on the educational ladder,right from the ECM (English Church Mission) and SPG (Societyfor the Propagation of the Gospel) church schools in the

castles, which were ran by Rev Thomas Thompson and PhilipQuarcoo. Then came Akropong Akwapim Training College in 1848founded by the Presbyterian Church, Mfantsipim (formerlyRichmond College in 1876 founded by Kwaa Botwe), and AchimotaCollege in 1919 founded by Governor Gordon Guggisberg. Beforethose, we had Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Education is the process of exposure to superior and qualityknowledge, as well as empowering educatees with validknowledge so that they have critical thinking skills andfaculties to make informed, better and quality decisions whichwill add value to the quality of their own lives, and lives ofothers, and in the end, help resolve socio-techno-politico-economic (PEST), and national problems.

Can we vouch that in the light of the aforementioneddefinition and inferred objectives of education, these nobleobjectives of education are being attained by the currentproducts of our pre-tertiary educational institutions inGhana?

A.N. Whitehead, the renowned English philosopher andeducationist, once wrote that, ‘Education is the purgation ofthe crudities of the mind.’ Thus, from this quote, we inferthat education is a process of refinement of the brain suchthat base and crude ideas are rid of through expungement,annihilation, extirpation, and banishing of darkness,socially, mentally, physically, and morally by imprinting onwhat John Locke referred to as the ‘tabula rasa’ or theanalogical blank sheet or uninformed mind of the child.

It is a never-ending and continuous process of enlightenmentto know and uncover the truth. Is our current educationalsystem in Ghana achieving those goals set by Whitehead in hisdefinition, and are we imprinting the right things on the‘tabula rasa’ of the children? Confucius once said that thefuture of a country depends on the quality of education itscitizens receive, and the quality of leadership of a countryis as bad as its citizenry or a reflection of it.

The Pestalozzi principle of education aims at training thehead, heart, and hands of our tutees so that they can thinkrationally, become passionate about noble and national causes,and become creative with their heads and hands in adding valueto the GDP. Can we say that our current educational system inGhana is achieving those noble goals set by Pestalozzi morethan 300 years ago? As a nation, what are the educationalgoals that we set for ourselves, as defined by the rulingparty’s manifesto and policies, and by the public interest?

It is, however, gratifying to note that the World Bank from2014 to 2019 has set aside 156 million dollars towards theSecondary Education Improvement Programme in Ghana. This is inpartnership with the government, and it is in recognition ofthe falling standards of education in Ghana which Brig GeneralNunoo-Mensah recently referred to severally and genericallywhen he said that, ‘the country of Ghana was rapidly goingdownhill in all spheres of life’. An American documentary onGhana which was made in 1994 ran a commentary pertaining tothe falling standards of education in Ghana. I could notbetter concur with these views.

The OECD recently published a report of a survey taken of 15year olds from 76 countries, and Ghana happened to fall at thetail end of the league table which was compiled by them. What

a sad story to befall our beloved country! The World Bankamount of 156 million dollars which is to be spent between2014 and 2019 is targeted at 23 selected Senior High Schoolsin Ghana, to help them improve on quality delivery ofeducational services.

What kind of education are we giving our children in Ghanathese days? Are we giving the right dose of holistic educationwhich will make our students and pupils self-reliant,tolerant, honest, patriotic, innovative, inquisitive,diligent, globally competitive, technologically-savvy and au-fait, and above all, selfless or altruistic?

Is our educational system inspiring confidence in ourstudents to appreciate their self-worth, become appreciativeof beauty in nature, beauty in their surroundings, and kindlein them high appreciation for aesthetic beauty in art works,music, sculpture, crafts, dance, poetry, folklore,scholarship, temperance? Are they being properly prepared tobecome cautiously futuristic, optimistic, and humane in alltheir noble endeavours?

If we examine the levels of crimes and moral turpitudeprevailing in all spheres of life in Ghana today, we will bewont to conclude that the quality of education being deliverednow has gone down from the previous high standards. It will behighly subjective to measure such criterion but then theevidence of frequent and rampant telling of lies, soaringlevels of corruption and cheating in our nation are barometricindicators which are there for all to see, and there is noneed to develop metrics to measure such an elusive phenomenon.

For purposes of this short write-up, I shall narrow educationdown to basic education received up to senior high schoollevel. This write-up will also examine why we have mediocrityin Ghana today, explore the genesis of vices such ascorruption, greed and avarice, examination leakages, politicalkerfuffle and disquiet, media obfuscation, and in general,national malaise and social atrophy in the Ghanaian bodypolity.

It seems that we have two main types of parallel education inGhana today, leading to education apartheid or separateness.On the one hand, we have some modicum of quality educationfound in the so-called (in Ghanaian terminology), eliteprivate international schools at the primary and JuniorSecondary school levels, where educational standards arerelatively quite high, and fees are astronomical, beyond thereach of most average Ghanaians. (Of course, we have the highor upper end of the market world-class international schoolsfor expatriates and the super-rich.

This market has schools such as the Ghana InternationalSchool, Lincoln International School, S.O.S Herman School inTema, among others. These are in the international circuit andthey are not meant for majority of us on account of theirsteep charges which are denominated in foreign currency. Theseschools have international curricula which they follow such asIB, Cambridge A Levels, IGCSE, and the American schools’syllabus).

On the other hand are the mass ‘cyto’ or public primary andjunior secondary schools where in most cases, school buildingsare dilapidated, school furniture is hardly found, teachersare inadequate, overworked, and relatively poorly remunerated.Instructional materials are scarcely supplied, and teachers in

some cases, for most times, are doing sinecure jobs. Someschool pupils in rural areas learn under trees. Some of theirdilapidated buildings have their roofs blown off during heavytropical storms. This is the typical scenario for mostpoverty-stricken families in poor rural communities, and evenin the old towns which have experienced declining economicfortunes.

Pupils are mostly deployed to work on farms, or they do somecommunal labour such as weeding or construction work to helpraise some funds for the school kitty. In such schools andenvironment, academic learning is relegated to a secondarystatus as the aim is to be seen to be going through themotions of delivering some kind of education, with no regardfor quality. When we talk about quality education, we meantotal, comprehensive, and holistic education that touches thehead, heart, and hands of educatees and tutees.

Run-down school infrastructure is normally found in the remoteareas of Ghana where school inspection and supervision arehardly existent. Educational institutions in the publicprimary and junior secondary categories in Ghana have becomehavens and incubators for ‘sakawa’ or internet fraudsters,breeding grounds for loafers, rabble-rousers, armed robbers, aplace to grow up, and in general, the sans cullotte repository.

This is so because students and tutees are not academicallyengaged and challenged by their instructors, teachers, andtutors. Sometimes, students become disenchanted, with bleakprospects facing them in the job market, and so they losemomentum for learning. The plight of these half-baked andpotentially dangerous drop-outs reminds one of the poetry ofAlexander Pope who intoned,

A little learning is a dangerous thing,

Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Springs

Where shallow draughts intoxicate the brain

And drinking deep sobers the mind once again

Alexander Pope

Boys and girls in these cyto public schools can hardly speakgood English as some resort to the easy way out - what isusually termed Pidgin English or patois. They hardly can spellsimple English words correctly. Many cannot construct norwrite simple grammatically-correct plain words of goodEnglish. I always bow down my head in shame whenever some ofthese Ghanaians are interviewed in the international media onTV or on air, and they stutter and fumble a lot with the waythey express themselves in the English Language, creating asorry sight for themselves, and cutting a poor image for ourcountry.

We are not saying that we want to train students foreducational grammar or scholarship, but then for them to befunctionally literate and employable or effective asentrepreneurs in the global village, they need to be well-rounded and well-grounded in basic literacy and numeracy,reading skills, good writing skills, logic, rhetoric,eloquence, interpersonal and communication skills, among otherareas of epistemology and pedagogy.

Ghana used to be a role model for other colonial Africancountries in terms of our high levels of education. Our judgesand magistrates used to be deployed to superintendent work insome of the neighbouring countries, working for UAC, and the

colonial judicature and civil service. Our soldiers in thecolonial West African Frontier Force distinguished themselvesin various fields of endeavour during the World Wars inCamerouns, Abbysinia, Burma, among others. Those includedpeople like Lt Gen Emmanuel Ankrah, Major Anthony, LawyerAduamuah, Sgt Mike Adjavon, Sgt Adjetey, among others ofblessed memory.

The list at the beginning of this write-up informs andrefers. Of those listed there, some were internationaldiplomats of repute with UN agencies, CommonwealthSecretariat, distinguished academics and researchers,scientists currently at NASA, among others. They are productsfrom the old school. But now we have lost it, and we are farflung at the bottom of the global league table of academicranking. Of course, our universities are still of greatstanding in Africa. Whether we like it or not, English hasbecome the international or universal language (linguafranca), and a vehicle for communication and instruction inthe world of commerce and industry, in the on-going process ofglobalisation.

Of course, it is cardinal and imperative for us to get ourkids first to value and appreciate our rich heritage and lorein the local languages and culture, and then extend theknowledge gained therefrom in mastering the English Language.After all, it is often said that charity begins at home. SomeGhanaian critics parochially view mastering of the EnglishLanguage as part of cultural imperialism. Need this be thecase? What about the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and otherswho are falling over themselves and making every effort tolearn English in order to drive their businesses in the globalmilieu?

The thesis of this write-up is that we do not have to crowdthe timetables of our beginning students with so many subjectsas to make them functionally illiterate in the basics ofreading, writing, and basic arithmetic. Do we believe in moreis better than less or is it a way of keeping the masses atthe bottom so that the few monetised and ruling classes willcontinue dominating and keeping the status quo ante?

These elite can afford to hire part-time teachers for theirchildren, and also provide them with a conducive environmentfor their wards to excel academically in the BECE and WASSCEexaminations. Even though there is a policy of Free CompulsoryUniversal Education in Ghana, outcomes of education are notcommensurate with what one will expect in a Middle Incomecountry like Ghana.

The table below from WAEC shows the increasing numbers ofcandidates who write the Senior High School exams from about500 SHS public and 288 private secondary schools in Ghana. Itis reckoned that an average of 21% candidates manage to obtaingrades between A1 and C6 to go on to tertiary institutions.In 2014, there were 422,946 candidates from all the 10 regionswho wrote the exam, comprising 223,765 male and 199,181female.

WASSCE PASS RATES

2014 2013 2012 20112009 2008 2007 2006 YR

28.10 19.15 31.19 26.0014.58 12.95 10.58 12.51 %

Number of Candidates for WASSCE

YR 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Number 395637 350899 372826 376859 391079 422946

Source: WAEC

Why are we toying with, and treating education in Ghana toCinderella looks? Are we practising factional elitism in orderto create a wedge between the well-educated minority elite onthe one hand, and on the other hand, the functionallyilliterate majority? Why do we rush to build many schoolswhere trained teachers cannot be found, and where we do nothave the wherewithal to procure instructional materials foruse by pupils?

The statistics enclosed here below indicates that Ghana isamong the global front-runners in terms of allocation of GDPto education. Denmark, Iceland, Finland and most Scandinaviancountries are global leaders in education, healthcare andgeneral welfare of their citizens. It is commendable that thefigures below show a rising trend of educational budgetallocations for Ghana, being above the UN recommended minimumof 4% of GDP to be allocated to education. However, it seemsthe problem lies in the utilisation of funds for planned andintended purposes, and other lapses in the system such as poorbudget oversight. Arthur Okun refers to the fungibility ofdonor funds and likens it to a leaking bucket.

Expenditures on Education in Ghana as Per cent of GDP

YEAR 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005

%GDP Exp

8.1 5.5 5.3 5.8 5.5 5.3 7.4

Source: World Development Indicators Sept 2014

Is quality not better than quantity? Is it not better to usethe little resources to improve the quality of existinginfrastructure than to dissipate the resources in providingmore schools which become like empty shells? In somecommunities that I know of, new schools were built but nopupils could be found in the catchment areas which arepopulated by very old people, whose grown-up children andgrandchildren have domestically migrated to the cocoa-growingand heavily forested areas. These migrants periodically comeback home during Gomoa Two Weeks Festival or during otherfestivals.

Timetables of junior secondary school students are crowdedand populated with 10 fanciful subject areas such as ICT,Basic Design and Technology, Religious and Moral Education,Social Studies, Integrated Science, Mathematics, among others.At the end of their programmes, some of them will not havephysically seen a computer or a chisel in their lives or evena test tube, beaker or flat-bottomed flask, or electriccooker/oven, and yet they are supposed to take BECE and WASSCEexaminations in ICT, Science, Basic Design and Technology,among other subjects.

I had occasion to read some of the textbooks of my daughterwho wrote her BECE in 2013, and I was shocked to realise thattheir ICT textbooks were 20 years behind time. Many of theirtextbooks are poorly written with factual errors and they are

poorly articulated. Most authors were just rushing to press tomake money and not to deliver quality. Their English textbookwas equally poorly written and not well articulated orillustrated.

In 1986, the current junior and senior secondary schoolsystems came into being to replace the old 6-4/5-2-3 systemwhich comprised 6 years primary education, 4 years middleschool, 5 years secondary school, 2 years sixth form, andthree years university. The author went through that oldsystem of 6-4/5-2-3. The current system is 2-6-3-3-4,comprising 2 years kindergarten, 6 years primary school, 3years junior secondary, 3 years senior secondary, and 4 yearsuniversity.

Under the current system, most students do not completestudying their secondary syllabus, and then they are rushed towrite final exams because the time duration is short, syllabuscontent is dense and bulky, some teachers are not committed,among other hurdles. Students are forced to learn andregurgitate stock answers because the BECE and WASSCE examsare structured in a way, requiring specific stock answers, andstudents are not awarded credit for critical thinking norallowed the freedom to think outside the box when answeringquestions in the exam. Could this be one reason why there isan upsurge in exam malpractices in Ghana, and also decay inmoral standards?

It seems to me that the whole aim of the current system ofeducation is to first frustrate as many students as possibleto drop out or fail the exams, or to produce programmedrobotic students who can pass exams through producing stockanswers. Is this quality learning? Are we producing criticalthinkers who can be creative and problem-solvers? Are our

students going to be successful when they meet theircounterparts from other parts of the world? Will this type ofstock learning of programmed answers produce quality nationalleaders?

What do you expect from such a flawed educational system?There is high incidence of functional illiteracy of mostpupils, prevalence of rote-learning, institutionalisation ofdichotomised education, rampant cheating, persistentcorruption, among other vices and negative consequences. Priorto the exam period, students are gripped with panic and thereis pandemonium, and bedlam preceding exams.

Head teachers and teachers become desperate to record highpass rates for their schools, parents want their children tohave certificates at all cost, pupils become anxious andrestless to obtain good credits so as to gain admission intotertiary institutions, school proprietors want to attract morecustom, and they may resort to buying question papers, amongother motives and underhand methods.

Our current state of Ghana reflects this dysfunctionaleducational system, as shortcuts become the norm because oflack of proper moral foundations.

Politicians who emerge from such a system see nothing wrongbribing the electorate to gain power because power is theultimate prize which must be attained at any price in thisworld of survival of the fittest, and Hobbesian state ofnature of Leviathan. The contractor sees nothing wrong usinginferior materials in construction. The building inspector whoshould know better is easily fobbed off by bribes in brown

envelopes. The pastor will willy-nilly give false prophecy soas to scare the hell out of his congregation so that he canfleece and milk them. Goro boys and leeches emerge at passportand visa offices, expecting their cuts from frustrated andprospective applicants and candidates.

Judges swing the pendulum of justice in the direction wheretheir bread is heavily buttered. Law enforcement officers playto the gallery and free culprits who can grease their palms.Male lecturers award high marks to beautiful but undeservingfemale students who will pander to their lust. Town plannersturn a blind eye to bribes when prospective builders enticethem to overrule professional advice for them to build inunpermitted areas. The upshot is a nation of disorder, greed,gross disrespect for time-honoured conventions and standards,and a mad rush for short term gratification.

The list of vices goes on ad infinitum. All these vices stemfrom our flawed educational system. Perhaps, I am claiminghigh moral ground here, and in this bleak scenario of doom andgloom, there could be a few people out there who have stillnot lowered their guard, and are still playing by the book. Idoff off my hat to them and urge them to be the standardbearers of hope and recovery for our dear nation. We salutesuch staunch adherents and sticklers for rectitude. Yes,charity begins at home, so we need our educational system toinculcate high moral lessons in our tutees. There needs to bea tsunamic revolution in education to get out the dross androt from the system, or else we are doomed as a nationforever.

Some of the problems bedevilling our educational systeminclude poor teaching methodologies and lack of commitment byteachers and pupils, the inadequacy of instructional

materials, lack of support from PTAs and communities, laterelease of Government Capitation Grants to schools,inoperability, collapse, and lack of vision of mostpoliticised District Assemblies/Local Government structuresand their dereliction, among others.

All these mean that our students and their teachers willresort to finding shortcuts such as mass examination questionleakages, mass cheating in exams, influencing the issuance ofexam results, forged exam results and certificates, amongother vices. Do we have to blame the policy of Free andCompulsory Universal Basic Education enacted in 1996, and theEducational Reforms of 2002?

Why can’t we simplify basic education to include just a fewsalient subjects, and incorporate the 3Rs of reading, writing,and arithmetic as the building blocks and foundationalmaterial for future advancement? Better still, to remainglobally competitive; let us give our junior and senior highsecondary students STEM education with emphasis on theSciences, Technology, English, and Mathematics as it is donein Scotland, Ireland and other countries which have qualityeducation. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Finland, Denmark,Sweden, Iceland and Netherlands are successful economically,socially, and politically because of their high qualityeducational standards.

To be globally competitive, we need to pay attention toquality teacher training and providing teachers with higherincentives. Our policy-makers in Government need to sit up andcome up with better policies because our future prosperity asa nation lies in investment in human capital via qualityeducation and quality health care delivery. These two sectors

are a desideratum and sine qua non for rapid economic andsocial development.

Let us develop a new educational paradigm which willstrategically position our educational system to meet ournational needs as well as help our students and tutees comeabreast with their counterparts in other parts of the world.

It is a pity that whilst many countries are getting their beststudents into Ivy League and Russell universities in the USAand UK respectively, to elite institutions such as Oxford,Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UCLA, MIT, ImperialCollege, Caltech, Dartmouth, Sorbonne, among others, ourstudents are only struggling to compete at sub-regional levelfor WASSCE dominance. How are our future leaders going to haveclout and influence in rubbing shoulders with the graduates ofsuch advanced, powerful and elite global institutions? Theywill have no powerful networks to enable them pull the stopsand call the shots, especially when it comes to internationalnegotiations.

It is a sad scenario to witness many of our school dropoutsfrom our current dysfunctional educational system in Ghanabecoming street vendors, foot soldiers and political partycadres or zombies, taxi drivers, Sakawas and internetfraudsters, prostitutes and pimps, Mediterranean boatmigrants, among others. This is sheer waste and needlessattrition of human capital, and also a waste of scarceresources. The factionalisation and dichotomisation of Ghanaright now along political party lines, tribal affiliations,interest groups, and religious groupings, does not augur wellfor the future.

We are currently producing students who seemingly have breadthto their education, but there is no depth. We are having massquantitative education rather than laying emphasis on quality.Our current students have become very aggressive inarticulating issues but they lack substance, and I bet manycannot make it far on the knowledge ladder whereby they canproduce books or contribute to academic discourses or becomeinventors like Apostle Kwadwo Safo, or become quality leadersin future. They have become the noise makers and serialcallers of our time, forever on cell phones, and makingincessant calls to our call-in radio shows where they talkshallow and offer no quality ideas.

The very fabric of our educational foundation has been erodedby political chicanery and poor policy articulation. We have,like the ostrich, buried our heads in the sand and becomeoblivious to the stupendous advancements taking place in theglobal village. We are busy building fanciful estates andinfrastructure but paying little attention to the quality ofeducation. In fact, for purposes of political expediency, ourcurrent politicians are obsessed and infatuated with themassification, fragmentation, and scatterisation of education,so much so that resources allocated to education become verythinly spread on the ground.

We pay lip service to making quality education accessible toall and with no child left behind. Do we put the money whereour mouth is? Have we set our priorities right? If ourstudents come out tops in regional WASSCE exams, is it anyworthwhile achievement to celebrate? In other countrieselsewhere, they are coming out tops in globally competitiveexams such as IGCSE, SAT, GMAT, IELTS, and InternationalBaccalaureate (IB), and yet they are not trumpeting theirsuccesses or politicising them.

In Ghana today with high rates of poverty and unemployment,many are the people whose children have no dream of accessingquality education due to poverty. Many are the people whocannot access quality health care due to the same reason. Isaccess to quality education a right or a privilege? Why do wehave a parallel situation of one type of quality education forthe minority rich and another type of inferior education forthe majority poor? Such a scenario leads to perpetuation ofclass struggle, and a recipe for revolution.

Is it selective social marginalisation engineering orpolitical malfeasance? What future does this scenario hold forour dear country Ghana? Where are the patriots? Where do westand as a nation where every Tom, Dick, and Harry nowbelieves that being dishonest, mischievous and Machiavellianis the norm because the end justifies the means, and not theother way round?

What values are our students acquiring from schools, and fromthe national psyche? What sort of education are our studentsreceiving these days? What moral or immoral lessons are theytaking from our leaders? What kind of leaders will they bewhen their time comes? Why is everybody in a mad rush forpower, material wealth, and vainglory? Can we start teachingmoral philosophy, psychology, mythology, literature, civiceducation, and religious tenets in our schools to halt thegreedy, crazy, and avaricious trends?

Can we start taking measures and interventions to stop therot and functional illiteracy in our schools? Can we stopdichotomisation and factionalism which are creeping their wayimperceptibly into education? Don’t we need a unitary and

functional educational system for national cohesion? These arethe worries of a concerned citizen, and I hope thinking aloud,is thinking allowed.

Some Proffered Solutions

Minimise Junior High School subjects to a core of sixsubjects namely English, Mathematics, Integrated Science,Technology, Social Studies, and Ghanaian Language

Provide optional or elective subjects according tolocality, and aptitudes of children in areas such as FineArt, Music, Design, Metalwork, Carpentry and Joinery,Home Economics, Agriculture, Tourism, Bricklaying, Auto-Mechanics, Horticulture, Fishing, Commerce,Entrepreneurship

Design local internship programmes to emphasise practicalslant to the vocational subjects

Improve conditions of teachers and train more teachers inSciences, Technology, Maths, and English

Put more emphasis on quality and not quantity in ournational policy planning

Encourage industries to partner with schools to provideeducational needs such as offering scholarships,providing furniture, and laboratory equipment, computers,etc

Allow more space to private schools and institutions torun international exams and provide tuition towardsinternational curricula such as IGCSE, IB, SAT, ABE,among others.

Ensure that early primary years devote more time to drillchildren in mastering the 3Rs of reading (elocution,phonetics, rhetoric, grammar, literature, comprehension),writing (dictation and composition, poetry appreciationand creativity), and arithmetic, as well as creativity,imagination and wonder through stories, art, design,discovery, exploration, and creating empathy

Assign soldiers, pastors, and counsellors to all schoolsto instil discipline

By Dr Kwesi Atta Sakyi

Senior Lecturer

Zambia Centre for Accountancy Studies

Lusaka, Zambia

Email: [email protected]