Model Secondary Schools To Be Science Biased

Papa Owusu-Ankomah, Minister for Education, Science and Sports

All model Senior Secondary Schools being constructed in the country will be science biased, the Minister for Education, Science and Sports, Papa Owusu-Ankomah, has announced.

The move, according to him, was to encourage the teaching and learning of science at the Secondary School.

“We need to have a comprehensive programme to improve upon science education in the country. To do that all the model Secondary Schools will be Science biased so that we have the opportunity to train more students,” he said, during a tour of the National Science Resource Centre in Accra last Wednesday.

The tour formed part of the Minister's visit to some institutions and agencies under the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports.

Papa Owusu-Ankomah noted that if Science and Technology education was a priority to the nation, then there was the need to invest in it by producing more science students by training quality teachers, as well as the provision of facilities.

He said he had requested a proposal from the Acting Director General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Mr Michael Nsowah, on how best the service could encourage science graduates to teach in Senior Secondary Schools so that the country could achieve the objective of making science education a reality.

“I had a discussion with Vice Chancellors and principals of polytechnics and they are saying that the reason why most students are not offering science in tertiary institutions is that those students were weak in science at the Secondary level,” he stated.

Papa Owusu-Ankomah stated that science education was key to the nation's development agenda and that it was incumbent upon all to do their best so that the government could achieve its objective.

He, therefore, underscored the need for Ghanaians to be ingenuous in finding solutions to some of the problems confronting the country by giving of their best.

He commended the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) for the work done in the placement of Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates into Secondary and Technical Schools last year.

The Co-ordinator of the CSSSPS, Mr A. A. Akuoko, told Papa Owusu-Ankomah that all was set for this year's placement exercise and condemned the practice whereby others tried to use other means to gain admission into public Secondary and Technical Schools.

The Head of the Science Education Unit of the GES, Mrs Sophia Awortwi, who took Papa Owusu-Ankomah round, thanked the Minister for the visit to the centre, which needed some facilities to operate according to expectation.

The National Co-ordinator for the Science Resources Centres, Mr Emmanual Atta-Gyamerah, called for the replacement of broken-down equipment at all the 110 Science Resources Centre in the districts since most of them were not functioning because of such a problem.

He explained that since the establishment of the centres about 11 years ago, they had not been provided with new equipment and this had affected the study of science in Schools.

“We are calling on the government to give us some funding so that the centres can be refurbished to enable the districts to use the equipment to enhance the teaching and learning of science,” he said.