Don't blame teachers for pupil's poor performance in BECE - Director

Ahyiresu (Ash), July 16, GNA - The practice whereby parents praise pupils when they perform well in the Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE) and turn round to blame teachers when the results are unsatisfactory is a serious disincentive to hard working teachers. Mr. Baffour Asare-Bediako, an Assistant Director of Education at the Atwima-Nwabiagya district education directorate, who expressed the concern, said parents should instead collaborate with teachers to identify problems that contributed to the poor performance and find solutions to address them.

He was speaking at a forum at Ahyiresu in the Atwima-Mponua district on Friday as part of activities to mark the Girl-Child Education Week in the district.

Mr Asare-Bediako said the provision of quality education is a collaborative effort of the school, the community and other stakeholders and that parents should critically examine themselves to find out if they adequately provided the vital inputs and basic needs of their children to improve teaching and learning. He, however, cautioned teachers against idleness, laziness, misuse of school contact hours and other professional misconducts that not only undermine quality teaching and learning but also impugn on the image and reputation of the profession.

Mr. Richard Owusu-Agyemang, the Atwima-Nwabiagya District Community Participation Co-ordinator (CPC), said policies and programmes initiated to enhance teaching and learning should be a collective decision of the entire members of the School Management Committees and duly approved by the community.

Mr Owusu-Agyemang, who is also the directorate's public relations officer, noted that the practice whereby some few SMC members and Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) executives implement policies without the consent and approval of the community is causing serious education delivery crisis, especially in the rural areas. He said the directorate has therefore initiated several training programmes for the SMC and PTA executives to address the power struggle and rivalry that usually exist between the two educational structures in the school communities.