Gains of Free SHS policy must not be eroded — IEPA
The Director-General of the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA) at the University of Cape Coast, Dr Michael Boakye-Yiadom, has said irrespective of the government in power, the gains made to increase access to education under the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy must not be eroded.
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“Whether the Free SHS system is going to continue to be free or semi-free, by whatever percentage, the model adopted, going forward, must sustain the gains made since 2017,” he stated.
Dr Boakye-Yiadom, who was contributing as a co-panellist on the topic, “Ensuring Quality Education in a Free SHS System: The Do’s and Don’ts”, said the country could not go back to the problems of inaccessibility, enrolment or equity for any reason.
Speaking on the Issues Segment on ATL Fm in Cape Coast, dubbed “SDG 4 Drive” (a programme designed by IEPA to interrogate educational issues towards meeting SDG 4 in Ghana) and monitored by the Daily Graphic, he noted that the Free SHS system had increased the number of students’ enrolment and graduations, ultimately improving equity and social justice.
“We cannot go back to challenges with access, enrolment or equity irrespective of which political party or president is at the helm of educational policy implementation,” he stated.
For instance, he said the 30 per cent catchment area placement was making it possible for learners from certain rural and peri-urban schools to attend category ‘A’ schools, adding that those gains must be sustained for the future.
However, he stated that education at the SHS level must provide learners with the capabilities required to become economically productive and to enable them to develop sustainable livelihoods.
Guidance and counseling
He called for “academic guidance and counselling to be strengthened to ensure flexible pathways for SHS graduates, saying, “SHS graduates should not struggle to identify their career paths to determine which post-secondary educational pathway they need to pursue for their future.”
Touching on issues of curriculum content and its importance to quality education, a co-panellist and lecturer at the IEPA, Dr Clara Araba Mills, indicated that the SHS curriculum as it stood now, offered a variety of courses to inform students on different pathways they might identify for further education and training, as required by the UN Sustainable Development Goal Four.
The curriculum, she observed, also catered for the core subjects of Mathematics, English Language, Science, among others, which generally provided the foundational and core skills needed to excel on a course or programme chosen for further education.
Teacher student ratio
On the ground, she said the data, however, indicated that the current average of teacher-learner ratio was 1:50 instead of the Ghana Education Service’s (GES) 1:35 standard.
That, she said, made it challenging for teachers to employ multiple methods and innovative ways to suit the needs of students.
Regardless, Dr Mills recommended that teachers would do well to employ different approaches to teaching to ensure that learning was productive and met the quality standards for education.
Dr Mills further indicated that another gap related to the curriculum identified at the SHS level, was the challenge of students transitioning into the tertiary system where some they had no clue with regard to pathways the SHS subjects’ combination offered at the tertiary level.
This challenge, she intimated, could be addressed through guidance and counselling at the SHS level.
She pointed out that unfortunately the guidance and counselling in schools had continued to be managed by just one individual, who was overwhelmed to combine the role with teaching.
