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‘Address educational problems to arrest unemployment’

 

 

The Forum for Education Reform, a group of eminent people, has underscored the need for the country to address simultaneously, the issues of access to education, quality and employment generation to arrest the unemployment challenges facing it.

In a document titled:  ‘State of Education in Ghana’, the forum observed that while at the tertiary level, pass rate  was not a major issue, access to employment by  the products of the system remained a headache.

The forum, which is under the auspices of IMANI-GHANA, is composed of educationists, captains of industry, business people and researchers. The group is working with government and like-minded organisations to improve standards in education.  

The group said that Ghana’s graduate unemployment situation was partly because “the economy was not generating enough jobs.

It said, the quality of education, in terms of employable skills such as analytical and critical reasoning, communication skills, ICT competencies, work ethic and entrepreneurship, was also responsible for the graduate unemployment situation.

The document, which tackled issues confronting education in the country from the basic to tertiary level, expressed concern about the under-resourcing of vocational and technical schools, culminating in students in such institutions being considered to be of lower grade as compared to grammar students.

“Any nation that neglects the production of quality technical staff and artisans will lack quality middle-level manpower which will adversely affect industry and also create youth unemployment problems, which Ghana is currently grappling with, it said.

Tertiary level

The group stated that the polytechnics had become mainly arts and social science colleges, while the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) now had more arts and social science than science and technology students.   “We need to dedicate our technical and engineering institutions to training people in technical and engineering skills,” it urged.

The forum described the country’s educational system as a high investment that was not delivering the needs and wants of the citizens.

Currently, Ghana spends six per cent of its gross domestic product on education, which is one of the highest in the world.

The role of the private sector in education

On the role of the private sector in education, the forum said “It is critical for government to clarify its policy towards private education at all levels, in view of their growing importance and potential to contribute more to the entire education system. 

It said the issue of parental contribution to the cost of education, even within the public sector, must be a subject of critical analysis. “There is never ‘free education’, even within the public sector,”  it pointed out

“The question, therefore, is whether we will fund it fully, and collectively do it via a tax system or through a combination of state funding and parental contribution,” it said.

 

 

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