NAB’s10-year mentorship to give institutions high integrity — Ablakwa

The deputy minister of Education in charge of Tertiary, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has explained that the 10-year mentorship process mandated under the National Accreditation Board (NAB) is to ensure that the certificates issued to accredited institutions are of high integrity.

“The strict process, as mandated by the NAB Act and NAB Legislative Instrument, is to ensure that the certificates awarded by institutions are of high integrity,” he added.

In an interview about the granting of a Presidential Charter to the Central University College (CUC) to operate as a fully fledged university, Mr Ablakwa explained that the President assented to the granting of the charter after recommendations by the NAB indicated that the CUC had fulfilled the necessary requirements for the charter.

The CUC becomes the fourth private university in the country to have a Presidential Charter after Valley View University, Trinity Theological Seminary and the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture.

NAB Act

The NAB Act requires that private institutions applying for a charter need to have a certain capacity for curricular, faculties, infrastructure and governance structures.

Mr Ablakwa said the requirements were to provide quality assurance and the integrity of the programmes those institutions offered.

He said with the charter, the CUC was now in the position to award its own certificates to its students and added that until then, CUC certificates were awarded by the University of Cape Coast, which was the mentoring university for the CUC.

Background

Giving further background to the award of the charter to the CUC, Mr Ablakwa said between 2009 and 2011, the NAB considered an application by the CUC for the granting of Presidential Charter and “after conclusion of its comprehensive assessment exercise, the board recommended a deferment of grant of Presidential Charter”, until the college addressed some shortcomings.

He said the institute was directed to, among other things, review its governance structure, especially with regard to the position of the founder of the International Central Gospel Church and added, “He could not be the Chancellor, the Chairman of the Board of Regents, as well as the Chairman of the Executive Committee at the same time.”

Mr Ablakwa said the board requested that the role of the Chancellor should be ceremonial, with well-defined titular roles, “and he should as much as possible distance himself from the day-to-day administration of the institute”.

Application for reconsideration

Mr Ablakwa said in 2013, the CUC applied to NAB for the reconsideration of its application for the charter, having provided responses to NAB’s recommendations.

“In conducting a reassessment of CUC, NAB considered CUC’s responses to the recommendations, undertook an on-site visit to verify the responses, and considered reports from UCC and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), the mentoring institutions,” he explained.

NAB recommendations

Mr Ablakwa said the NAB, from the inspection of CUC’s facilities and from interactions with officials of the university college, noted that concrete steps had been put in place to address the concerns raised.

“It, therefore, in accordance with Regulation 20 (3) of L.I. 1984, recommends, through the Minister of Education to the President of the Republic of Ghana, the grant of Presidential Charter to the Central University College as provided for in Section 12 of the NAB Act 2007  (Act 744),” he said.

He said the NAB report, in recommending the approval for grant of the Presidential Charter to the CUC, drew the attention of CUC to the provision of Regulation 20 (6) and (7) of the L.I. 1984.

Regulation 20 (6) states: A charter may be suspended or revoked by the president on the recommendation of the board, while (7) states: The grant of a charter does not relieve an institution of the obligation to operate only in facilities approved by the board or to run only accredited programmes or courses.