2016 in retrospect - a look at education
When Ghana is writing its history on education, 2016 will definitely go down in the annals as an eventful year that cannot be overlooked. A number of educational issues came under hot debate.
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The Daily Graphic gave attention to some of those issues which came up at the district, regional and national levels. SEVERIOUS KALE-DERY on the Education Desk takes readers down memory lane.
From examination malpractice, agitations, admission matters, validation issues, inauguration of new community day senior high schools (SHSs), Computerised School Selection Placement Secretariat (CSSPS), the conversion of polytechnics into technical universities, the promulgation of the Technical Universities Act to the inauguration of the interim vice chancellors and their teams of the technical universities were all major events that took place in the year under review.
Exams malpractice
During the year under review, both the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) came off without any incident of examination leakage, a headache that often marred the beauty of the conduct of the examinations by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC).
It is a big kudos to WAEC and everybody who ensured that it happened that way.
CSSPS
The CSSPS which started in 2005 made history last year. For the first time since the inception of the CSSPS, over 96 per cent of BECE candidates were placed at a go and also by the close of the year 2016, the secretariat had placed over 98 per cent of the candidates into senior high, technical and vocational schools.
For the first time again, more vacancies were declared than the number of candidates who qualified for placement. Indeed, statistics at the CSSPS had it that even if all the candidates who wrote the BECE were to be placed, they would have all had admissions, thanks to the addition of the newly inaugurated community day SHSs.
Community day SHSs
The ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) had promised to build 123 community day SHSs. In all, 31 out of the 123 earmarked new community day SHSs with over 1,500 vacancies were added to the 2016/17 academic year’s admissions.
The schools were built as part of the NDC government’s promise to improve access to secondary education and to implement its progressively free SHS policy.
Progressively free SHS
The issue of free SHS was high on the agenda for 2016 as government roped in 120,000 boarders to benefit from its progressively free SHS programme for the 2016/2017 academic year.
These were in addition to the 365,000 day SHS students who started benefiting from it in 2015 under the government's free SHS education policy.
Conversion of polytechnics to technical universities
The conversion of the polytechnics into the technical universities undoubtedly was one of the most controversial events.
Initially, six of the 10 polytechnics were given the nod to be converted after the Technical Committee set up to advice government on the conversion submitted its report. It advised government that the exercise must be done progressively to satisfy the requirements of becoming a technical university.
They were Accra Poly, Kumasi Poly, Volta Poly, Koforidua Poly, Takoradi Poly and Sunyani Poly.
However, two other polytechnics reapplied for the technical committee to reassess them and they were also given the nod after the second reassessment. They are the Central and Tamale polytechnics. The technical universities came into being with the promulgation of the Technical Universities Act, 2016 (Act 922).
New vice chancellors
During the year under review, there were changes of vice chancellors in some of the country’s universities.
A former Provost of the College of Education Studies and a Professor of Science, Prof. Ghartey Ampiah, was appointed the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast.
The former Provost of the College of Science at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Prof. Kwasi Obiri-Danso, was appointed the Vice Chancellor of the university.
A former Provost of the College of Basic and Applied Sciences, Prof. Ebenezer Oduro Owusu, was appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana.
Presidential Charter
The Central University in the Greater Accra Region received its Presidential Charter after 17 years of mentorship under the University of Cape Coast. That made it an autonomous institution capable of awarding its own degrees, diplomas and certificates.
Agitation
The Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG) declared an indefinite strike during the year under review.
The strike was to press home its demand for the government to migrate the tutors of colleges of education to a tertiary status and pay remunerations that would reflect their new status.
GES validates documents of staff
The documents of 13,297 members of staff of the Ghana Education Service (GES) who applied for the payment of their salary arrears and other allowances were validated by the Audit Service.
The documents were part of about 60,000 submitted by the GES for validation by a team put together by the Ministry of Education in response to earlier threats by teacher unions to embark on an industrial action to back their demands for the payment of their salary arrears and other allowances.