Do not offer yourselves for grades - Opoku-Agyeman tells female university students
The Minister-designate for Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman has advised female students to strive to do better in the universities instead of giving in to advances by male lecturers in order to earn their grades.
Advertisement
She admitted that the problem of sex for grades in the universities existed, explaining, however, that it might not be widespread.
Answering a question on whether sex for grades in the universities was just a perception or real when she appeared before the Appointments Committee of Parliament, the nominee, who is the immediate past Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, said she had heard about that situation.
Prof Opoku-Agyeman explained that the situation was, however, not an over-riding factor in the award of grades in the universities since it was not the rule but an exception.
"Even if it is one person who is perpetrating this act it is bad and should not be encouraged", she said adding that if that happened, it compromised the system.
"Whoever is doing that must be ashamed. Shame unto you", she said amidst laughter from members of the committee and the packed audience.
She encouraged female university students to be up and doing since they were up to any task assigned them at the universities instead of offering themselves to some university lecturers for grades.
When asked about her thoughts about the ongoing debate about free education for senior high school students, Prof Opoku-Agyeman said the question should not be free or fee paying, the overriding factor should be the outcome.
Other Trending Stories
"Whether education at the second cycle level is free or not, the question that we should ask ourselves is: are we getting what we want? That should be our concern".
Touching on how the public universities have veered off from their core mandate, the education minister-designate said the acts that set up the universities also gave them mandate to respond to other national needs in the provision of human resource.
Prof Opoku-Agyeman said the problem of the shotfall in the training of science-based professionals should rather be tackled from the basic schools where some teachers lacked the requisite knowledge to develop the interests of pupils to offer the sciences at higher levels of education.
She said there was the need for teachers teaching at basic level to know how to teach the sciences to enable their students to have the interests to offer science courses in the universities.
Asked whether if she was satisfied with the current conditions of service for teachers, the nominee stated that even though so much had already been done for teachers, much more needed to be done for them to entice them to give off their best.
Prof Opoku-Agyeman promised to partner the Ghana Education Service (GES), to ensure that the well-being of teachers was improved.
She stated that incentives such as scholarships, participation in seminars among others could be used to motivate teachers to give off their best.
The nominee said Ghanaians owed it to themselves to assist the government to raise the level of public schools to the level of private schools and explained that she was going to collaborate with stakeholders for the realisation of that dream.
She told the committee that it was unfortunate that salaries of newly-posted teachers delayed and attributed the situation to administrative bureaucracies and promised to look into the matter should she be given the nod.
On the vacancies in classrooms, Prof Opoku-Agyeman said there was the need for an aggressive programme to train more teachers to fill the vacancies to ensure that quality education was offered to pupils in rural areas.
She added that absenteeism of teachers was a worrying situation and attributed it to ineffective supervision, explaining that teachers offering sandwich programmes had no business to absent themselves since their lectures were conducted during weekends.
Prof Opoku-Agyeman also attributed the threat of strike action by the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), to cumbersome procedures in the resolution of labour problems and called for such procedures to made effective to avoid unnecessary strike actions.
Advertisement
On the issue of discipline, she said discipline should be coded and all stakeholders should be aware of what sanctions were in place for breaking rules.
When he took his turn, the Minister of Communications-designate, Dr Edward Kofi Omane-Boamah, said there was the need to strengthen the collaboration between the National Communications Authority (NCA) and the National Media Commission (NMC).
He said while the NCÁ had the technical competence to deal with issues concerning the allocation of frequencies, it was clear that the NMC did not and added that instead of disagreements between the two over who should wield the power to issue out and deal with other matters with regard to radio and television frequencies, there was the need to strengthen co-operation.
Asked how he would address the problem of poor service delivery by the telecommunication companies, he said, he would strengthen the system of assessment already established by the NCA, which included fines, commendations and condemnations.
Advertisement
He was also of the view that a domestic system of "roaming" which would enable subscribers to switch from a network which had poor frequency signals to another in any locality would enhance mobile telephony in Ghana.
On how to enhance the operations of the Ghana Post Company, Dr Omane-Boamah said as a company which had a very wide reach, it could enhance its money transfer and delivery of parcels services.
The minister designate also commented on the issue of local content in the telecommunications industry and said if approved, he would ensure that Ghanaian investors in the sector were encouraged and protected so long as it did not infringe on any law.
On the issue of digital migration in the television industry, he said, he was in full support of the policy and would pursue it if approved, adding that it would not be in the interest of the public to allow the importation of analog televisions when the nation was moving away from their use.
Advertisement
He also promised to address the problem of lack of equipment faced by the Ghana Meteorological Agency.
Story by Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah & Mark-Anthony Vinorkor