Issues affecting education sector call for broader debate
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, has called for a broader debate to deliberate on issues affecting the education sector.
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For instance, he said, issues such as the duration of the Senior High School (SHS) education should not be left to a small group of people at the Ministry of Education or the Ghana Education Service (GES) to decide for Ghanaians.
Forum
“There has to be a forum for us as Ghanaians to debate these issues. It should not be the prerogative of a small number of people at the Ministry of Education or the Ghana Education Service (GES) to decide that for us, it is about us and our children and our future.
“So it is not for the Ministry of Education or Parliament or anybody, it is for us as Ghanaians to discuss those issues, that is the point,” Prof. Aryeetey stated at the 25th anniversary lecture of NDK Financial Service Limited.
The occasion was used to launch NDK’s Corporate Social Responsibility Foundation which would focus on education, health and sports.
Prof. Aryeetey noted that if the SHS duration was changed from three to four years and back to three years, he would not blame former President J.A. Kufuor or the late Prof. J.E.A. Mills but rather the system that did not encourage argument and debate on national structures.
Polytechnics
Commenting on the conversion of polytechnics to universities, the out-going Chancellor of the University of Ghana said solving the problem of the polytechnics did not mean they had to be redesignated.
“You solve the problem by going to the basic, grassroots…to deal with the issues. What are the problems of the polytechnics, everybody knows that they are poorly equipped like most institutions in Ghana,” he said, and added that “they need resources to function properly”.
According to Prof. Aryeetey, the polytechnics needed financial and human resources to function properly, and that if those resources were not provided and their names were changed, nothing was going to happen.
“Polytechnics were created for a purpose. We created them in order to have technical expertise, middle level technical expertise to run industry. Basically the manufacturing and the construction sectors were going to depend on these institutions.
“Universities, on the other hand, are meant as academic institutions. Whether you call them technical universities or not, universities are academic,” he said, stressing, “Their job is to generate ideas…and we sell them. Polytechnics are going to use those ideas and create skills out of them”.