Naana Opoku-Agyemang Should Stop Jiving

We know for a fact that the quality of our Senior High School System has been the least bit among the educational policy concerns of the leaders of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), because the NDC’s leaders have an unenviable track-record of budgetary corner-cutting, even when it was all-too-glaring that the 3-year SHS System was not helping our children and grandchildren compete favorably against their counterparts in both the advanced industrialized countries and the Third-World at large. Not very long ago, for example, an academic-performance evaluation conducted by experts from the OECD, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, had Ghanaian students placing butt-naked last, as New Yorkers are wont to say, among some 145 countries.

Now, this ought to worry the former Mahama Minister of Education, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, who is also a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast (See “ ‘The Focus of Education Should Be Quality Education[,] Not Duration’ “ Citifmonline.com / Modernghana.com 9/28/17). The fact of the matter is that while, indeed, the curricular duration of our SHS System may not be the only critical factor to consider in discussing the imperative need to improving the quality of secondary education in the country, nevertheless, it can hardly be gainsaid that duration as a factor in the discourse on the improvement of our SHS System cannot be taken for granted the way that most of the NDC leaders appear to be doing facilely and cavalierly.

For instance, we have had Ms. AkuaSenaDansua, the former Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, under the tenure of President John Evans Atta-Mills, state publicly and categorically that the sole purpose of the 3-year SHS System was to expeditiously prepare our young women for the marriage market. Under President John Dramani Mahama, Ms. AkuaSenaDansua would be named Ghana’s Ambassador or Chief Diplomat to the Federal Republic of Germany. What we need to be highlighting here are two salient factors, namely, the fact that Ghanaian high school students are faring badly against most of their counterparts around the globe. And, secondly, the reasons and/or factors that got us into this Stygian mess. For, it needs to be recalled that prior to the advent of the so-called Rawlings’ Revolution in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ghana’s educational system was ranked favorably both in the West African sub-region and around the globe.

We must also quickly point out the fact that nearly every one of the most industrially advanced nations follow the 4-year secondary educational and/or curricular system. And so we need to begin asking why otherwise fine scholars and prominent academic administrators like Prof. Opoku-Agyemang believe that, somehow, Ghanaian high schoolers are endowed with such superior cranial capacity as to render the 4-year globally recognized and accepted system either otiose or decidedly effete. More so, when all the available indicators point to the obverse being quite the case.

And, yes, Naana Opoku-Agyemang is quite right that students in some high schools in the country perform almost equally well under the current 3-year system. But, of course, the key descriptive word here is “almost” because even as Dr. Ernest Aryeetey, the former Vice-Chancellor of the country’s flagship academy, the University of Ghana, had occasion to observe not long ago, on average, students who pursue the 4-year curricular system tend to be better prepared for college or tertiary academic culture than those schooled by the 3-year NDC-concocted system.

Let’s face it, somebody is flagrantly, if not downright criminally, being shortchanged here. And the likes of Prof. Opoku-Agyemang, who were privileged to have experienced the old, superb British-minted “O”- and “A”-Level system of high school had better own up.

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