Many people had been warning for a while about the disastrous consequences awaiting the piece meal approach with which the educational authorities in Ghana have been addressing matters. Three things leave much to be desired: reduction of the SHS duration without any scientific justification, tent housing and classroom phenomena (lower level is schools under trees) and corruption of the schools computer selection system. No body seems to give heed to the warnings except to intensify propaganda of falsehood and unfounded accusations and blame-game. Unusual School Prospectus for Senior High School (SHS) entrants in Ghana is an added burden and a new dimension to the signs that education in Ghana is taking a nose dive for the worst.
Parents of, especially, new entrants to many senior high schools are stressed, having had to contend with unusual purchases for their wards.They are seeing for the first time the demand for buckets of branded paints, plastic chairs and even bags of cement in the list of items they must buy before their children can take up residence in such schools.
Now that the admission process has been completed or on the verge of doing so, they can afford to lay bare their unusual predicament at the hands of an educational system which government has promised to make friendly and affordable.
We have just learnt that the plastic chairs which some schools are demanding are meant to be used in the chapels on Sundays. Bizarre eh!
It appears that the Ghana Education Service (GES) is too distant from the happenings in these schools that in the bid of the headmasters to survive, they are hatching all manner of survival projects to weather the storm of the times.
Some of the schools are specific in their demands, asking for only Azar Paint and others Leylac, justifiably prompting questions about whether there is a certain pact between them and the manufacturers of such brands.
We hear that the demands have the blessing of Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) which, we hear, want to make for the inability of the GES to supply the needs of the schools.
In such cases, we would have expected that the crazy demands be applicable to continuing students and not parents of newcomers who have already managed to pay so much for their kids.
Things are so difficult in the country that such strange entries in schools’ prospectuses create more challenges for the already vexed economic situation in the country.
Parents who have had to dip their hands deeper into their already lean pockets must be sulking about the new predicaments they are facing in a Better Ghana template.
Why the existing systems like the GETFUND cannot be made to provide paints and cement to assist public schools to fend for their development needs is something beyond our ken.
Perhaps, a Better Ghana project means more demands on the citizenry, regardless of the negative effects of these.
In the midst of the rancour triggered by the spectacle of students in the company of their parents porting bags of cement, buckets of Azar paints heading for their new schools, the GES is yet to come out with a convincing dissociation from the developments.
It is interesting to note that the unusual demands are not limited to one school or even a region but it cuts across the country. The country-wide pervasion has pushed critics of the new system to ask whether the GES is unaware of the demands.
Even as we await the usual dissociation by GES from the demands and perhaps a warning to schools to desist from asking parents to make bizarre purchases, we would continue to wonder what is really happening to Ghana’s educational system and governance in general.
It is time we all woke up and told the powers that be that we are tired of the numerous blame games being constantly played out by the elected. I believe you would agree that no employer hires an employee to come and list the problems within the outfit without proffering the way forward. Apparently, the employer already knew all the problems hence used that as basis for selecting presumably the most competent candidate to help resolve the perceived challenges. Thus it would appear horrendous for such a candidate to assume office and then turn round to blame his predecessors for all the seeming challenges. Either the current administration face the difficulties head on else they be given the boot. I think four years is too long a time for a nation to waste with block heads at the helm of affairs. I propose that contrary to parliamentary impeachment ascribed by the Constitution, we should rather use the system applicable to the District Assemblies. At the District Assembly level, a proportion of duly registered voters in an electoral area have the right and can actually seek to remove an elected Assembly person from his seat or post in a very simple and less complicated form.They only sign a petition with a given number or percentage of signatures and that is all they need to kick out a non-performing member from office. Similarly, a percentage of voters in Ghana should be able to sign a petition by way of collating signatures to oust a non-performing President from office before the end of his official term or tenure if he or she is deemed not performing. There should not be any yardstick by which voters can judge whether a President is performing or not. They are discerning enough to set their own standard by comparing and contrasting. Invariably I can already understandably feel and hear some murmurings that this is a recipe for chaos as it is largely subject to abuse and manipulation by some miscreants but for me it is the best check on abusive regimes to make a President both perform and be a listening/sensitive to the cries of the voters and citizenry at large. What do you think?
