Frank Mackay Anim-Appiah
10 November 2009
opinion
Accra — There are many indignities meted out to children in our educational institutions which bring untold hardship to them and their parents.
The greater majority of these children are those who come from poor homes.
Have we so soon forgotten the case of students in a Kumasi school who could not write their final examination because they were not duly registered? What of the candidates who had to re-sit English and Mathematics papers because of leakage? As usual, everything is hanging and no-one is telling the good people of this country anything. I am not surprised.
Some teachers in the Accra Metropolitan Area have kicked against a compulsory ICT exam for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates. I say a big ayekoo to them for saving our nation another headache. One thing about teachers is that if they decide to put in their best, nothing stops them.
Had the teachers not exhibited the highest form of vigilance, the West African Examinations Council would have imposed an ICT exam on innocent and unsuspecting school children.
I understand WAEC sent sample questions on ICT to schools for candidates sitting exams in April. However, the teachers who know the situation on the ground disagree with the move since there are no facilities and personnel to teach the subject.
If the teachers had displayed a little bit of insensitivity and not acted timely, WAEC would have pulled it fast on us but the teachers cried out "This is just a bomb-shell class yet the questions are technical. You just can't use three months to do it".
I have a problem with the Ghana Education Service who claim not to have given any approval for the commencement of ICT examination this year. The impression everybody has, is that there is a close and healthy collaboration between these two organizations.
This being so, how come things could get to a stage where the GES did not know what WAEC was doing with the future of our children? Thousands of school children were going write the paper and fail in their numbers. Who gets the blame? The teacher of course!!!
While the private schools have ICT facilities for their students, majority of the students who attend public schools have never seen nor even touched a computer. The authorities at the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service are not unaware of the fact that even the schools in Accra and other regional capitals have no facilities for this subject.
In fact, about 90% of teachers in our public schools are illiterates when it comes to ICT. Imparting theoretical knowledge to the children is a huge problem let alone tasking them with practical aspect of the subject.
Why do we put our teachers under unnecessary stress when we have not resourced them?
The idea of one household one laptop spearheaded by the late legislator and indefatigable finance minister Kwadwo Baah Wiredu was a policy that would have transformed our educational system completely. Had it been pursued, school children especially those in the public schools should be smiling by now.
A stage for linking our rural communities to the urban areas via the internet could have been set. But the current government has no room for its predecessor's policies. Just because another political party initiated it, the Mills administration will have nothing do with it. It must go!!
This is another clear example of NPP/NDC politics. Should our children suffer because one political party does not like what the other did? Is this country for the political parties alone? WAEC's action would not have been questioned if the Baah Wiredu programme had not been killed at birth. Our parliamentarians must bury their differences and take a positive stance on this issue.
WAEC and the GES owe Ghanaians an explanation for that dangerous academic arsenal which the concerned teachers stopped from being fired at our school children. The GES public relations officer merely saying his organization did not give an approval is not enough.
Will someone tell me what happened to the Kumasi school proprietor and his headmaster who pocketed registration fee of their students? Has any sword fallen on the WAEC officials who contributed to the exam leakage?
There are too many cases for which nothing is heard of after the noises that herald them fizzle out. Are we a serious nation?
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