Let us rescue our education

Education, it is said, is the bedrock of every nation. No nation can develop without laying a good foundation for education. It was based on this fact that our first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, pumped so much money into the development of educational infrastructure across this country during his rule.

Kofi Annan and other great men Ghana has produced came out of this good educational system. In those days, middle school leavers could speak and write impeccable English. Unfortunately, the situation is not the same today. Products of our basic schools and even the tertiary level institutions can never be compared to the products of the aforementioned days. The situation even became worst when the JSS concept was introduced.

Already, there are reports that about 160,000 pupils who took part in the Basic Education Certificate Examination could not pass in most of the subjects. This means that they would not attain placement at any senior high school to further their education. If one should scrutinise this list carefully, it would come out that the majority of them are from public schools.

It is now becoming clear that the difference between private and public schools is getting wider and wider every passing day. It is therefore not surprising that every Ghanaian wants to send his or her child to a private school. Surprisingly, teachers who teach in these private schools are, in most of cases, not trained teachers but they are able to impart better knowledge to the children. So the big question is what is basically wrong with the public schools that are endowed with trained teachers who come out of our teacher training institutions?

The Chronicle would like to call on the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the Ghana Education Service, the government and all stakeholders to hold detailed discussions on the emerging trend and determine the way of bridging the gap. We are making this call because if care is not taken, education, especially in the rural areas, would become so poor that it would be very difficult to repair the damage.

We are aware that a number of interventions have been put in place by the government, including the annual donation of a complete house to the best teacher, but we believe we should go beyond that and offer more attractive packages to entice our teachers to give off their best. The Chronicle would also like to appeal to the GES to intensify supervision of teachers handling these public schools.

The private schools are doing well because the proprietors are doing proper supervision. Some teachers like other public sector workers think that the jobs they are doing belong to the government, hence they do not care about anything. After all, at the end of the month, they would be paid. The GES can even rope in the local assembly members and other community heads who are always with these teachers to play reconnaissance roles for them. The Chronicle is not suggesting that these assembly members should supervise the teachers but since they are always with them, they can determine whether a particular teacher is performing their duty or not.

Our education system is gradually getting out of hands. We need to do something to rescue the situation now!