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No Room For Poor Performing SHS Heads – Education Minister

By Kasapafmonline.com/Ghana
Education Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang
FEB 11, 2016 LISTEN
Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang

Minister for Education, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, has warned that the era where the Ministry had tolerated heads of Senior High Schools (SHS), especially, those in the public schools to continue to superintend over poor academic performance is over.

According to her, the continued stay in office of heads of public SHS would soon be linked up with the performance of their students in the West Africa Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) among others.

She said it was about time heads of second cycle institutions who have been managing poor performing schools in WASSCE up their game in devising strategies that would help improve on academic work in those schools.

The Education Minister made this observation when she interacted with 500 heads of second cycle schools in both public and private sector at the Kumasi Anglican SHS, Tuesday.

Some of the issues discussed were the causes of poor performance from the perspective of WAEC and of students and the responsibilities of the heads of schools in the performance improvement of their students and their role in preparing them for WASSCE.

The engagement was meant to orient the heads of schools on effective leadership and management at the school level.

Experiences of heads of schools that have deployed strategies to record improvement in the performance of their schools were also shared.

Presentations were also made on why students perform poorly and factors school management must consider in preparing students for WASSCE.

According to the Minister, in spite of the significant investment to improve performance in both public and private SHS, the pace of progress has been below expectation.

Although general performance has improved, she said assessment of WASSCE results has revealed that performance in mathematics and science has been poor.

Prof Opoku-Agyeman said heads of schools had direct responsibility for ensuring improvement in the performance of their schools and in preparing students for WASSCE.

“Regrettably, our interactions with senior high school heads revealed that some of them do not fully appreciate their responsibility towards the performance of their students.

They see annual failure of their students in WASSCE as normal. Many have superintended over consistent poor performance of our schools and have not initiated any measures for improvement”, she said.

She warned that such heads needed to change and take their responsibilities more seriously.

“Leadership and management is critical to ensure effective running of schools for acceptable results”, she added.

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