…As Odeefo Oteng Korankye II Educational Fund holds 2018 Stakeholder and Fund Raising event

Former Rector of Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Professor Stephen Adei, has lauded government’s decision to use part of the oil money to fund Free SHS, describing it as very commendable.

He indicated that it is the only way to ensure the distribution of the oil money.

Millions of people, He said, are caught in the vicious cycle of ignorance, poverty and deprivation, and he is of the view that this is a good means to curtail that.

Adding that, a lot of politicians have benefited from free education at one level or the other, which has helped in shaping them, and it is only fair that this opportunity is spread across, so that everybody would have the opportunity to shape their lives through education.

He however cautioned that, access is one thing and providing quality education is another, and it is important that government combines both to ensure meaningful impact on the educational sector.

“if we are not careful, we would only be pushing pupils from BECE level to fail at the WASSCE level, and that is not going to do us any good.

We must avoid the situation where Free SHS would lead to producing semi-illiterate senior high students, which would mean they would have only wasted three more years”. He cautioned.

Adding that, the educational problems are not actually at the SHS level, but rather at the basic level, and that people might say the free SHS policy is not good, whilst the actual problem is with the basic level”.

He also bemoaned the wickedness of teachers in the public Senior High Schools who refuse to teach and deliver quality education at that level, due to lack of supervision, and this accounts for the failures of Ghana’s educational system, which if we do not confront, it would explode in our face.

He further indicated that, the failures of students at the public schools have nothing to do with teacher’s salary, availability of resources, incentives just to name few (though they are needed), but rather teachers who do whatever they please due to lack of supervision.

“The time has come for us to confront this, because as a nation, we are on a time bomb, because we are producing young people who would be the tools of social disruption, all because we have allowed teachers not to work, and we are not talking too”. Prof. Adei indicated.

Acording to him, people like them went to schools under trees, were taught by untrained and secondary school failed teachers, but because they were committed and were supervised well, it yielded results and made them who they are.

He said “as a nation, we must admit that we cannot afford to be paying trained teachers more than a thousand Cedis (Gh¢1,000), offer them with good facilities to work and yet the outcome is worse than the poor private schools which are managed by secondary school failures, and because they are supervised very well and are accountable, they produce better outcomes”.

He said, this is a social fight that Ghanaians must fight for the sake of their children.

He further lamented the Ghana Education Service’s (GES’s) inactivity and lack of hold on the educational system, describing them as “an elephant which cannot turn itself”.

Prof. Adei was speaking at the 2018 Stakeholder and Fund Raising event of the Odeefoo Oteng Korankye II Educational Fund at the Ashesi University, Brekuso.

He further stated that the government’s decision to use the oil money to fund the Free SHS is very commendable and the surest way to ensure that, the oil money is evenly distributed.

He however advised the government to tailor the educational policies in a way to achieve purpose.

The Odeefoo Oteng Korankye II’s Educational Fund was founded in 2016 to support needy but brilliant students in the Berekusu community with a mission to support educational achievement for the children of Berekusu towards a brighter future for the community and with a vision of making Berekusu a center of excellence for education and purposeful development.

 

Exclusively Newslinegh