Public Agenda (Accra)
Ebenezer Hanson
25 July 2008
Educational experts have sounded increasingly alarming about the unacceptable high drop out rates of pupils after basic education and have been grappling with solutions to stem the unhealthy phenomenon.
But the Convention People's Party (CPP) lays the blame squarely on the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) which is used for the selection and placement of pupils into senior high schools (SHS).
Accordingly, the party's flagbearer, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, has said a CPP administration will abolish the BECE when it assumes office after the December 2008 elections.
The CPP says the decision to scrap the BECE will ensure that there is uninterrupted flow of pupils from the junior high school (JHS) to SHS. "There will be no examinations from the basic school level to the senior high school and this will reduce the high drop out rate the country is confronted with."
The social policy was contained in the party's 2008 Manifesto dubbed "New Dawn, New Vision" which was launched at a colourful ceremony in Accra on Tuesday.
"We shall consider abolishing the BECE, which prematurely condemns too many of our children to failure before they have had a chance to prove themselves in life. This should also ensure that the every Ghanaian child gets at least a secondary education, creating a wider and deeper pool of candidates to train the scientists, engineers, architects and other professions that we require to build a 21st century society, " the manifesto explicitly declares.
The CPP says under a modified and expanded policy, the Accelerated Education Sector Investment Programme (AESIP), educational facilities from kindergarten to the tertiary level will be refurbished and expanded to meet the need of a modernizing society. To the party, "education serves a multiple purpose of aiding the individual to better understand society and nature and to acquire the skills needed to earn a decent living while contributing to national development."
To meet the expanded educational needs of a growing population; the CPP has revealed that it will in collaboration with the non-state sector, including religious organizations, improve access to education at all levels making secondary education part of basic education and will be made free.
It adds that it will actively promote boarding schools as "a way of reducing the cost of education and at the same time encouraging Ghanaians from all walks of life to live together and know each other before they enter the world of work. This is one of the surest ways of fighting ethnocentrism and creating a common sense of nationhood among our future leaders".
The CPP, however, says it will review the relevance of the four-year SHS programme and explore the possibility of restoring the three years programme and use the saved resources to improve access and quality. The four year programme was one of the outcomes of the new educational reforms which is in its first year.
Besides, the party promises to make vocational and technical education a post-secondary course to ensure that those aspiring to pursue such courses are "adequately prepared academically." In pursuance of that all vocation and technical schools will be adequately resourced under the Accelerated Education Sector Investment Programme to be introduced by the CPP.
While admitting the steady increases in salaries of teachers in recent years, the CPP points out that discontentment has caused many teachers to leave the profession for other lucrative jobs. To curb this trend, the CPP promises to reduce income taxes for teachers who work in rural areas and places designated as deprived. Additionally, it will improve working conditions of teachers, including timely payment of salaries for new and current teachers and home-ownership packages.
The Chairperson of the Manifesto Committee, Dr. Nii Moi Thompson, revealed that under a CPP regime, teachers will use one year to do their first degree programme after teaching for two years, following their diploma course at the training colleges. "Why should a teacher who had done a three-year diploma programme use another three or four years to obtain his first degree leaving the classroom vacant? It should be possible for him to achieve that within a year under a comprehensive programme."
When Public Agenda spoke to some educationists and teachers on the propriety or otherwise of the proposed abolition of BECE, they were of the view that the policy can only work if the number of SHS correspond with the number of JHS. Currently, there is a shortfall in the number of SHS and unless this yawning gap is bridged it will be practically impossible to implement that policy.
"Assuming the BECE is abolished and about 600 JHS students have chosen a particular SHS which has vacancy for only 200 students; in the absence of examinations, the school should have some means by which they can select the 200 students. If this is not provided the school would be compelled to devise some criterion to achieve that," one teacher explained.
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