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Bring back 4-year SHS system - Catholic Bishops
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Bring back 4-year SHS system - Catholic Bishops
{sidebar id=10 align=right}The Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference has reiterated its call on the government to bring back the four-year system of Senior High School (SHS) for the country to know its full benefits and disadvantages before deciding to make any changes or switch to other systems.
It stated that there was no denying the fact that, it was possible for students to finish the academic syllabus within three years, given greater commitment on the part of the teachers and co-operation from students.
"But basing ourselves on the testimony of teachers and the formative needs of the students, we urge that the four years SHS programme be brought back," it stated.
It would be recalled that at the 2011 Catholic Bishops' Conference held in Takotadi, the church made the same appeal to the government to maintain the four-year SHS system to enable the nation determine its full benefits and disadvantages.
The President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, Most Rev. Joseph Osei-Bonsu, made the call when he read a communiqué issued at the close of a week-long 2012 Annual Plenary of the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference in Koforidua last Thursday.
The event was attended by four archbishops and 14 bishops from the various Catholic Churches in Ghana.
The President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference also appealed to the government to reconsider the challenges involved in the computerised system of placing students in schools, saying that "these challenges are well known to the state, parents and guardians".
He also stated that the church had taken notice of recent call for freedom of worship in second cycle schools in the country by President John Dramani Mahama at the last Eid-ul-Adha celebration.
"We like to state that the Catholic Church respects and practises freedom of worship in our schools.
"We, however, like to raise this concern that what some are calling for in the name of freedom of worship could lead to very complex challenges of indiscipline, and other pitfalls for education delivery for our schools", stated.
He, therefore, called for a broader involvement of all stakeholders and a very careful study of what the right of freedom of worship should mean in practice, and its implications for schools and for education delivery in the country.
Most Rev. Osei-Bonsu called on Ghanaians to endeavour to rise above their ethnic and tribal boundaries and consider themselves as one people in spite of their differences, especially as the December elections drew nearer.
"It is against this backdrop that we appeal to all Ghanaians to see our country Ghana as one extended African family with the President as the head of this family", he said.
With regard to the Presidential Act, Most Rev Osei-Bonsu commended the executive, legislature and all Ghanaians for the various roles they played in the passage of the Presidential Transition Act.
"This Act, we hope, will, to a large extent, address unacceptable political practices and enhance transparency and accountability in the management of public assets".
"We urge all, especially politicians, to be open-minded about the Act as we recommend to the government to put the necessary institutions in place for the implementation," Most Rev. Osei Bonsu stated.
The president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference further commended the government for the Constitution review process aimed at introducing reforms to the 1992 Constitution after 20 years of democratic practice.
"We note that the government has issued a white paper on the Commission's Report and has inaugurated the Constitutional Review Implementation Committee. It is our expectation that the process will continue to be open, participatory and inclusive to deepen our democracy and governance for the well-being of citizens.
"In this vein we look forward to reforms that will expand economic, social and cultural rights, and strengthen national institutions and systems that reduce bribery and corruption, and ensure the elimination of the death penalty," added Most Rev. Osei-Bonsu.
With regard to the National Development Plan he expressed the church's happiness with the appointment of a body to develop a national plan that would be generally acceptable to all Ghanaians, saying that the short term nature of the present "Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda" did not adequately meet the development needs of Ghanaians.
"We therefore wish to endorse the proposal of the Constitutional Review Commission to have a medium to long-term development plan. Such a provision should be entrenched in the constitution to make successive governments abide by the plan.
"This, we believe, will stop the practice whereby the development of our country is subjected to the party manifesto of the government in power," Most Rev. Osei Bonsu said.
From: Ghana | Daily Graphic
No commentsNana Addo's Free Education Policy: What the World Says
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12 November 2012
Nana Addo's Free Education Policy: What the World Says
Education for all has become one of the key pillars of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) as a major catalyst to development.
The Education For All (EFA) Global Monitoring published its report in 2002 with a view to monitoring progress towards six Education For All goals enshrined in the historic Dakar Framework for Action.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}Compiled here are excerpts of some of the key points which dovetail squarely with Nana Addo’s Free Senior High School Policy if elected President of Ghana coupled with his envisaged redefining of Basic Education attended by some brief commentary.
In their 2011 report, it was discovered that some sub-Saharan African countries are either adamant or lag behind in the Education For All Dakar Framework for Action. The EFA sought to pursue the following goals:
? Expand early childhood care and education
? Provide free and compulsory basic education to all
? Promote learning and life skills for young people and adults
? Increase adult literacy by 50 per cent
? Achieve gender parity by 2005 and gender equality by 2015
? Improve the quality of education to Education For All by 2015
The Dakar Framework for Action in line with Nana Addo’s concept focuses on equality for all as the overarching policy goal of any government and as a key to measuring the success of initiatives by the international community. Governments across Africa and most developing countries are failing to tackle inequality, as in Nana’s view which is rightly so, the government of Ghana under John Dramani Mahama and his deceased predecessor have not been up to the task in their current approaches to governance.
Developing countries are not spending enough on basic education so donor countries have not lived up to their commitments for fear of diversion of aid funds. Stagnating aid to education is a serious concern for educational prospects in a large number of low-income countries especially Ghana.
The report stresses that increased financing without provisions built-in to ensure equity will not benefit the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups as in the current NDC selective handling of basic education needs on partisan lines for Ghanaian children.
The World has the following to say with my commentary:
{sidebar id=12 align=right}Progress towards Education For All is one of the defining development challenges of the 21st century. The right to education is basic human right and, as such, it should be defended as an end in itself. However, education is also means to wider social, economic and political goals.
In the current situation of economic crisis and competition of various interests, it is timely to stress this critical role of education as this Report does.
Only educated citizens can achieve economic growth and this requires equalized access to quality education, now more than ever. No country or society today can afford to exclude anyone from education because of poverty, ethnicity, religion or gender yet NDC is inclined to stifling access to education for all Ghanaian children by making it fee-paying to the disadvantage of poor families south of the Volta.
The Report argues at length about wider benefits of education in economic terms. For example it cites several studies which have found that one additional year of schooling lifts average annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 0.37% yet NDC has reduced SHS training from 4 to 3 years.
Education is more than skills for economic sustainability. Schools are cultural institutions where children learn the languages, history and culture of their respective societies, acquire social skills and self-confidence, broaden their horizons and address issues as full and active citizens.
People who are denied this full broad-based education are less likely to participate actively in their societies and can hardly influence decisions that alter their lives and those of others. That is why education is also fundamental to democracy and government accountability.
Education for All is a Fundamental Human Right and Catalyst for Social Justice and Development; Education for All is social justice; Education for All is economic justice; Education for All is the path to development.
Millions of teenagers have never attended primary school and many more have left Ghana’s school lacking the skills they need to earn a livelihood because they have inadequate training by ending up at JSS, not enough to enable them participate fully in society; therefore, Nana Addo and we in the NPP believe that every citizen of Ghana be given adequate free education at least up to SHS level from where all other vocational and socio-economic interests and developments would have been well groomed to maturity.
According to Alexander Pope, C18th English Poet, ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing so drink deep or taste not the intellectual spring because shallow droughts drunken our brains and drinking deep sobers us again’. This is Food for thought.
Leaving basic education at JSS is waste of time, and resources because the learner acquires nothing for intellectual and mental development. Unlike Japan where 98% of the population have at least a university degree, in the UK, only 25% of the population are university graduates.
It has therefore been imperative for the government to set the minimum educational requirement for a job at General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), up to where it is free and compulsory. At GCSE level, ambitious employees and many individuals not in employment have what it takes to progress to higher heights of intellectual attainment.
Many are those of us in the diaspora who have followed the path of opsimaths, learning late in their lives and having pushed themselves up by their own bootstraps and contributing tremendously in Ghana’s socio-economic development because there has been a solid intellectual foundation laid earlier at secondary school level.
Nobody who completes JSS would ever be offered any job in the UK or any of the countries in the diaspora, not even cleaning toilets but with SHS qualification, immigrants compete for jobs with the indigenous people.
In child psychology, not all children develop intellectually at early childhood. This should not mean that children who have late development should be left-out. At least, up to SHS is enough a starter pack to ensure parity and social justice amongst Ghana’s children for the future.
Millennium Development Goals cannot be achieved without EFA, but neither will education goals succeed without progress in other development areas! The Dakar Framework for Action was adopted in 2000.
In the same year at the United Nations Millennium Summit, world leaders adopted the Millennium Development Goals, which extended from the reduction of extreme poverty and child mortality to improved access to water and sanitation.
The MDGs put education goals in this broader context, thus clearly linking achievements in one area with the development in others.
Indeed, as this Report illustrates, it is difficult to sustain progress in only one area of development. Halving poverty or cutting child mortality by two-thirds appears not to be a serious proposition, given the slow and unequal progress towards universal primary education (UPE).
By the same token, achievement of Universal Basic Education (UBE) will not be feasible without increasing and equalizing access to food, sanitation, medicine and other life-sustaining resources.
Children whose lives are blighted by hunger, poverty and disease are clearly not equipped for realising their full potential in school. Public health and child mortality are both linked to education. Universal Basic Education cannot be compulsory if it is not free in the sense that the beneficiary does not pay for it.
Amongst the many world-wide organisations that sponsor UBE are Global Campaign for Education; Right to Education Project; UNICEF; Oxfam International; Safe the Children; Peace Corps; UNESCO; World Bank; Child Aid; World Food Programme; FAO; Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN); Fast Track Initiative; Building Tomorrow and indeed many more.
A John Dramani Mahama-led NDC administration proposes pro-poor approach to solving Education For All needs across Ghana without telling the people what criteria he is going to use to identify those who might qualify.
If the pro-poor approach had been used, he wouldn’t have been a beneficiary of free education for being a Northerner because his greedy father who was wealthy enough to pay for his education benefitted from the then affirmative action put in place for Northerners of whatever socio-economic status.
Ghanaians should not be confused with the complexities of semantics when we talk about free education as some predator capitalists like Mensah Otabil expound the issue of things and services that are deemed to be free.
Though someone somewhere pays for our goods and services that we call free, they are free because the intended beneficiaries do not foot the bills for those goods and services. There are various goods and services that we presumably enjoy free yet they have been paid for by tax payers in donor countries.
The same applies to what our own taxes and natural resources cater for us. What sense would it make for the rest of us Ghanaians if for some weird reason some people must benefit from our taxes and resources whiles others do not. Now is the time to grab the bull by the horn. Vote for Nana Addo and the NPP for a people-centred approach to governance.
By Adreba Kwaku Abrefa Damoa, LLB; MPhil (London) London UK
Nana Addo’s free SHS: Good for the rich, Bad for the poor
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Nana Addo’s free SHS: Good for the rich, Bad for the poor
{sidebar id=11 align=right}The NPP says free SHS is possible and that it is a testament of Nana Addo’s commitment to the poor in society. The NDC, being put on the defensive by such a catchy election promise says free SHS is possible but that the country is not ready yet for such a costly policy given the current state of our educational infrastructure. But is the NDC right and the NPP wrong? I am tempted to say so.
In fact given where we are as a country, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that this free SHS will benefit the well-to-do in society and further deepens the woes of the very poor Nana Addo is claiming to fight for.
Who in his rightful mind will argue that a free SHS will be bad for the poor? Yet, this is precisely what is going to happen if the infrastructure deficit in our senior high schools is not addressed first.
The reason for this is not far fetched.
{sidebar id=10 align=right}Currently, many JHS graduates especially those in the villages cannot gain admission to senior high school because there are not enough schools or classrooms to accommodate them. This fact cannot be disputed and is in line with the report on the country’s SHS educational infrastructure conducted by some university professors and published on GNA on 12 October 2012.
I know a lot of JHS graduates whose parents were willing to pay to get their kids into the senior high school but were told the schools are full. This means that whether SHS is made free or not, we will still face the same problem we have at the moment and even worse for the poor. This logic should be simple to understand.
When SHS is made free, it will mean that the well-to-do in society whose kids are normally the ones that gain admission to SHS and who already can afford to pay will be getting a free ride.
What is even more pathetic is that this free ride would be financed with the same money that is meant for building more schools and training more teachers (especially in the rural areas) so that the kids of the poor is not denied access to the senior high school or sit under trees.
With money meant for addressing the problem the poor are facing diverted to cater for the rich, isn’t it then easy to conclude that this free SHS is for the well-to-do and not the poor? In theory, given the facts on the ground, Nana Addo’s free SHS is simply saying, the rich should get richer and the poor, poorer.
The rich will be better off and the poor worse off under the proposed free SHS where there are not enough schools to accommodate all students because instead of the rich paying for their kids’ education, they rather get to keep their money.
Thus, they are in the position to use this unspent money to hire private tutors for their kids to help them perform even better than the poor’s kid. This will all but ensure that only kids of the well-to-do qualify for the few SHS spot available.
It is undeniable that given the state of our economy, money will have to be diverted from some projects to finance the free SHS.
This money is surely not going to come from anywhere but from the one earmarked for the expansion and improvement of the country’s educational infrastructure.
If so, then the poor should be forewarned that their plight is about to get even worse than it is right now because it is impossible to get something for nothing.
Remember the popular saying: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
By Ato Dadzie
Note: I am neither the current Nana Ato Dadzie of NDC or Ato Kwamena Dadzie of Joy fm.
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Graduate wage 'premium' cut by a fifth in just 10 years
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07 November 2012
Graduate wage 'premium' cut by a fifth in just 10 years
Graduate wage “premiums” have slumped over the last decade because of a lack of jobs, pay freezes and rising levels of student debt, a major report has found.
By Graeme Paton | Telegraph
The earnings advantage gained by university leavers has been cut by more than a fifth overall since 2003 as a result of the economic crisis, it was claimed.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}Researchers warned that the value of a degree had steadily declined each year, with students taking arts and humanities courses being hardest hit.
Ministers have repeatedly claimed that an undergraduate degree can add more than £200,000 to graduates’ average earnings over their lifetime compared with adults who shunned university altogether.
But the report commissioned by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit warned that the “relative earnings advantage associated with a degree appears to have been declining slowly over the past decade, possibly by as much as two per cent per annum relative to average earnings in the economy”.
It is feared that wage premiums will decline further still in coming years after a sharp rise in tuition fees.
Students starting courses this autumn will be expected to pay up to £9,000 a year almost three times the previous maximum.
The study warned that the employment market for existing graduates was in “sharp contrast” to that witnessed a decade ago, with university leavers more likely to face unemployment or jobs in low-skilled industries.
“Unemployment is no longer insignificant, affecting more than one-in-10 of graduates with many experiencing difficulty in findings jobs.
{sidebar id=10 align=right}“For those that do find jobs, there is a much greater likelihood that the job will not be a graduate job. The relative earnings of graduates continue to decline, although compared to suitably qualified non-graduates, a degree still confers an earnings premium.
“Student debt, incurred through tuition fees and maintenance expenses, has been rising, an ominous sign given that [current] graduates do not form part of the high fee regime introduced in England in 2012.”
The “Futuretrack” report analysed students who started university in autumn 2006, the year “top-up” fees of up to £3,000 were introduced by Labour.
The study, based on surveys of more than 17,000 students conducted between November and February, examined how they had fared in the labour market after graduating in 2009 or 2010.
The findings show that four-in-10 were in “non-graduate jobs” roles which fail to utilise their degree 18- to 30 months after graduation. A fifth of students with a first-class degree failed to gain skilled employment, rising to half of students with thirds.
By comparison, just 26 per cent of students were in non-skilled jobs after leaving university when a similar study was last carried out a decade ago.
It also found that students who graduated in 2009 faced higher debts, with average university leavers being required to repay £16,000. By comparison, students who left university in 1999 had average debts of £7,960 equivalent to £10,300 when adjusted for inflation.
In a further disclosure, one-in-10 new graduates had experienced "significant" periods of unemployment and those from black or Asian backgrounds or with a lower degree classification were more likely to be affected.
These factors combined to bring down the average wage “premium” for graduates relative to average earnings, the study found.
Overall, the premium had dropped by 21.7 per cent between May 2003 and November 2011. But graduates with an arts degree saw their relative earnings fall by 33 per cent, while humanities students witnessed a slump of almost a quarter.
By comparison, the wages of law graduates were down by just nine per cent.
Men were also more likely to be hit than women, seeing earnings slump by 23.8 per cent, compared with 20.7 per cent among women.
Source: The Telegraph UK
Ghanaians rank education topmost priority in election 2012- NCCE survey
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08 November 2012
Ghanaians rank education topmost priority in election 2012- NCCE survey
{sidebar id=10 align=right}A survey conducted by National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has revealed that majority of Ghanaians perceive educational issues as the most important in the run up to the elections.
The survey dubbed: “Election 2012: matters of concern to the Ghanaian voter,” said a total of 5,416 respondents mentioned education as the first of three rankings beside health and employment.
The respondents called for the abolishment of sports fees, Parent Teacher Association dues and examination levy.
The survey discovered that most Ghanaians want government to set up more educational institutions in mostly rural areas to provide quality education.
It said while new school buildings should be constructed to eradicate schools under trees, provision of educational materials such as tables and chairs, textbooks and computers must be adequate to meet the needs of students.
The respondents called for better incentive and remuneration for teachers so that they would be in a better position to teach well do away with extra classes which come with its own exorbitant fees.
The NCCE survey established that training for more teachers is more crucial to Ghanaians; who believe that professional teachers need to be trained to provide quality education.
It said government should support social intervention initiatives by extending the school feeding programme and the free school uniform through the capitation grant to cover the whole country.
The survey established that most Ghanaians would support government efforts to extend Ghana Education Trust Fund to private secondary schools.
The citizenry want government to address the duration of the senior high school programme once and for all and stop politicising it.
From: GNA/Ghana