Poor performance at JHS, SHS scandalous — Education Minister
The Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, has bemoaned the poor academic performance in public first and second cycle schools and advised directors of education to provide the kind of leadership and supervision that is conducive for teaching and learning.
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“That leadership should provide an environment for the teacher to work with dedication, commitment and a sense of responsibility. That leadership should also provide the kind of environment that holds the teacher accountable and motivates the child in the classroom to learn to improve academic outcomes at the school level,” he said.
Dr Prempeh was speaking at the 24th annual Conference of Directors of Education (CODE) which is being held on the theme: “Equitable and inclusive education for the youth: The gateway to life-long opportunities at Abesim, near Sunyani.
Scandalous
“It is scandalous that only 30 per cent of our SHS graduates obtain grades that are sufficient to gain them admission to our tertiary institutions,” he said, adding that “it is unacceptable that some junior high schools (JHSs) in the country score zero per cent pass at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) level,” he emphasised.
According to him, teachers at the basic level of education in the public sector were better paid and more qualified than their counterparts in the private sector, and yet performance at the BECE in the private sector far outstripped the public sector.
That, he said, had resulted in a situation where top senior high schools (SHSs) were almost exclusively populated by pupils from private JHSs whose parents were able to afford private education.
“This is a dangerous recipe for social imbalance and a threat to social mobility,” he observed, and reminded the directors of education that “the current picture in our public-sector educational system is not encouraging”.
Dr Prempeh, therefore, charged the directors to make every effort and take every step to improve academic outcomes of pupils at the basic level in the public sector.
SHS enrolment
Touching on enrolment in SHSs, the minister said for the past four years, an annual average of about 100,000 pupils who were placed in SHSs by the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) did not enrol in the schools.
He said the number represented about 25 to 30 per cent of all pupils who sat the BECE every year, an indication that the situation was attributable to financial reasons.
Dr Prempeh said it was against that background that the inequality of opportunities for all students was addressed by the removal of cost barriers by the free SHS policy.
“With relatively a short time for students to be admitted to begin the academic year at both the basic and the secondary levels, we would require that you apprise yourselves of the implementation details of the free SHS policy to be in a position to inform parents as they turn to you for further clarifications,” he stated.
He said the government was committed to creating career progression pathways for teachers who wanted to go into school management, adding “we will provide the needed support and training to ensure that becoming the head of a public school is not a function of the length of a teacher’s service”.
He gave the assurance that teachers who wished to rise to the very top of their teaching careers would be encouraged and supported by the government to do so.
National President of CODE
In a statement, the National President of CODE, Mrs Margaret Frempong-Kore, said the motivation for directors was to work tirelessly to remove barriers that got in the way of children in achieving quality education.
She said CODE was ever ready to create that enabling environment that would trigger new knowledge and motivate teachers to depart from old ways of doing things when the needed inputs and resources were made available at the right time.
Mrs Frempong-Kore said even though it was the obligation of every employer to provide safe and conducive workplaces, working tools and residential accommodation had hardly been met, explaining that with the lack of funds to support administrative overhead, directors of education were still expected to perform at their maximum.