Ghanaian students urged to make education priority

A director for basic education under the Ghana Education Service, Stephen Adu, on Tuesday advised pupils under basic educational system and others to make their education a priority by making full use of the opportunity provided to become responsible adults in future. The call was made following public assertion that the standard of education in the country keeps falling year after year. In an interview with a local radio, Adu refuted the assertion, saying that teachers at junior high schools had been well trained to teach the seven compulsory subjects and two optional ones. He told the radio that there were several factors that could ensure a good educational system including the commitment of teachers, the pupils readiness to learn, availability of textbooks and other relevant teaching and learning materials. Others were the role of parents in the education process, participatory process between pupils and teachers as well as the role of the government. "If all these were put in place, children will come out successfully at the end of the JHS examinations," the director said. However, Adu stressed the need for the pupils themselves to take their lessons seriously as in the absence of that nothing concrete could be achieved if everything were placed at their disposal. "If all stakeholders do their bit and the children themselves were not ready to learn, it becomes a problem," he added. He claimed that educational system of the West African country had been structured to train pupils to continue to either the senior high school, pursue an apprenticeship program or be absorbed by the informal sector. But, he quickly admitted that the system had not been able to create enough room for the increasing number of junior high school graduates, making them unable to continue their education at senior high schools. On what plans to absorb those who could not enter into senior high schools, Adu said they had already rolled out a scheme this year to train 5,000 graduates in various apprenticeship programs. He asked those in the informal sector to complement efforts made by the government with very innovative programs to take some of the graduates on board with skills that would make them earn a living. "It is not everybody who can pursue academic work. Some people are good at using their hands and legs so it is up to us as a society to put in place programs to cater for all of them," Adu stated. Most of the teachers in the junior high schools have been criticized by the public for ostensibly abandoning their classrooms to pursue distance education programs to upgrade themselves. He admitted this, saying that the activities of some teachers more often than not resulted in waste of instructional time and that his outfit was going to intensify its monitoring to ensure time was utilized to benefit the pupils. Ghana currently operates a 6-3-3-4 educational system, 6 years for primary school, 3 years for junior high school, 3 years of senior high school and 4 years of university education.