Give adolescents opportunities for work — Prof. Awusabo-Asare
The Director of Academic Planning and Quality Assurance of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Prof. Kofi Awusabo-Asare, has said the current trends in development makes it imperative to educate adolescents and also provide them with opportunities for work.
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Speaking at his inaugural lecture on the Topic: “Transition from Adolescence into adulthood in Ghana: What do we really know?” at UCC, he said even though governments had made efforts to improve the quality of education, none of them, since independence, had been able to implement universal education.
The lecture, chaired by the Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Domwini Dabire Kuupole, was attended by lecturers, chiefs, students and a cross- section of the public.
He said the nation still recorded about 68 per cent illiterates, with 29 per cent from the rural areas while about 10 per cent were found in the urban areas, adding that the interface of education, family formation, healthy living, lack of work and political consciousness constituted emerging challenges for the adolescents in their transition into citizenship.
He revisited the issue of the duration of senior high schools (SHSs) in the country and suggested the reversion of the three-year SHS system to four years to create an enabling environment for the students to develop better.
He said the time had come for the education sector to come out with policies that would help develop the education system to meet the transitional needs of the adolescent and the young population instead of doing politics with their educational needs.
Prof. Awusabo-Asare said there was the absence of a nationally representative data collection in the country and stressed the need to obtain systematically correct, adequate and reliable data for the study of the lives of young people in the country.
He, in this regard, recommended the development and implementation of programmes for the youth who should be informed by the available information.
According to him, the last five decades had witnessed an increase in the number of people entering the adolescence stage and the lengthening of the period between childhood and the assumption of adult roles.
Prof. Kuupole expressed concern about what he described as a mismatch between education and employment in the country and tasked the Faculty and Institute of Education of UCC to help address the educational needs of the country to fulfil the objectives of setting up the Institute of Education in the university.
Ever since the Cabinet approved the three-year senior high school (SHS) educational system in 2009, the issue of whether to change or maintain the four-year SHS system had generated mixed reactions from politicians, academics, technocrats and parents who hold opposing views on the issue. — GNA
