Tuesday 9 August 2016
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FOCUS ON GHANA
SPECIAL FOCUS ON
GHANA
Mahama: Changing Lives? Transforming Ghana?
President John Dramani Mahama (as Vice President )stepped into
the saddle in 2010 when his erstwhile boss President John Atta Mills passed on.
With that he became the 4th John in a row (After John Jerry Rawlings, John
Kuffour and John Atta Mills), to lead the emerging West African nation of
estimated 25million people. Taking the reigns of power at a time of global
economic melt down has not been quite easy, but he has managed to swim above
the murky waters. Surviving a close
electoral battle with his major rival Nana Akufo Addo in 2012 has not only made
him tougher but more strategic and more determined to deliver on his promises
to the people of Ghana in all priority areas. Despite criticism from some
quarters and vehement castigations from the main opposition, it is quite
pertinent to note that Ghana has really changed relatively positively in the
past four years of Mahama’s tenure, though there is still work to be done.
There are quite a wide range of criteria for measuring the
transformation indices of a nation at any given time, Definitely,
infrastructural development, improvement in educational standards, rural
development through efforts which encourage small and micro entrepreneurship,
are some of these. These are definitely
some of the areas that the Mahama administration has taken some very visible
strides in the fulfillment of the mandate given it by the Ghanaian people.
Particularly outstanding is the massive investments in the
educational sector that has invariably reengineered an unprecedented turn
around in the hitherto parlous educational standard in the country a few years
back. The administration remarkable efforts in this sector is a clear
indication of a genuine desire to lay a formidable foundation for a nation that
was gradually losing the quest for educating its youth due to poverty in some
cases and the inexplicable lure of fast
money amongst some youth; going by recent researches.
With the hindsight that a country which neglects education
is definitely headed for the rocks, the administration’s prioritization of
education must be applauded.
To further emphasize the importance of the giant strides in this sector in Ghana,
it is pertinent to reflect on the score card presented by President John Mahama
to the people of Ghana at the Parliament when he delivered his state of the
nation address 2016, detailing his administration’s achievements in the
improvement of education in Ghana.
“I would like to
show how we are changing lives. And what a better place to start than with
education, which has been proven to be the single most effective way not only
to changea single life, but other lives that surround it. Education can bAreak
cycles of poverty and abuse. Education is the key that can unlock, for
children, worlds into which their parents could not enter; worlds they never
even knew existed. During this term, my first term as President, we have
consciously developed strategies and made interventions to raise the quality of
education by emphasising its relevance,improving access, and working to
eliminate gender discrimination and inequality. We have also worked to better
train and equip our teachers.
BASIC EDUCATION
Ghana has been commended by the United Nations for meeting
the target of theMillennium Development Goal (MDG) on achieving universal
primary education withgender parity. Despite that achievement, there are still
a significant number of school-agechildren that are not enrolled. These
children are now being targeted under the Compulsory Basic Education
(CBE)programme of the Ministry of Education. In the last year, a total of
54,800 out of schoolchildren in four regions have been enrolled into schools.
These are 54,800 children whowould not have received an education. These are
54,800 children whose lives will now have much different outcomes as a result
of this programme.Other important social interventions that are being
implemented in the educational sector include the issuance of free supplies
such as uniforms, sandals and textbooks.
In June 2015, I launched the free school sandals programme
which saw the start of the distribution of 10,000 Kumasi Shoe Factory
Made-in-Ghana leather sandals to school children in need across the nation.A
number of students would have struggled without the basic necessities with
which to attend school - students like Mohammed Awabu of Moglaa JHS in the
Savelugu District of the Northern Region who received free sandals; or David Aminayire
of Nayagenia JHS, Kassena-Nankana Municipal in the Upper East Region who
received free uniform, free exercise books and textbooks. Last year, I insisted
that the Ministry of Education must ensure that all textbooks areprinted in
Ghana. This is on course. In fact, I would like to acknowledge the statement of
gratitude received from the Ghana Printers and Paper Converters Association,
led by Mr.James Appiah-Berko. I would especially like to take note of their
indication that this intervention will help create1,400 new direct jobs. Better
still, that is 1,400 new direct jobs in Ghanaian businesses.
In our determination to improve quality education, we have
also introduced two newprogrammes - the Teacher Professional Development
Initiative and the Provision of Teaching and Learning Materials programme.The
Teacher Professional Development initiative aims to achieve a target of 95%
trainedteachers at the basic level by 2020 as set out in the Education
Strategic Plan (ESP). TheProvision of Teaching and Learning Materials (TLMs)
programme has seen to the distribution of teaching and learning materials to
10,924 basic schools. In addition, 30,000 teachers were trained in ICT under
the Basic School Computerisation Programme, bringing the total number of teachers
trained under the programme to 50,000.
SECONDARY EDUCATION
Secondary education was plagued with a number of challenges,
notably lack of access,leading to a poor transition rate from JHS to SHS. We
are vigorously confronting these challenges. Under our programme to establish
200 Senior High Schools, I can report that 123 are currently being constructed.
But permit me to place this project in a broader perspective.
The first secondary school was established in Ghana 140
years ago, in 1876. Between that date and 2012, the number of public secondary
schools established was 526. The 123 schools that are being implemented right
now will create more than 200,000 new places in the system, thus making the
Community Day Schools Intervention the biggest ever expansion programme in the
entire history of secondary education in Ghana.
It is because of this programme that 16-year-old Apim
Shulamite is now the Assistant School Prefect of the Atta Mills Community Day
School in Otuam. After completing JHS, Apim, who once dreamt of becoming a
nurse, had to stay home for a year due to lack of access to a secondary school.
Apim's parents are settlers from Somanya. Her father is a taxi driver and her
mother sells second-hand clothing. During the year that she stayed at home, Apim
sold waakye and worked in a chop bar.
Because of the Community Day Schools intervention, students
like Apim are able to gofrom limited prospects to the fulfilment of personal
dreams that ultimately benefit the entire nation. Additionally, under the Secondary
school. Apim's parents are settlers from
Somanya. Her father is a taxi driver and her mother sells second-hand clothing.
During the year that she stayed at home, Apim sold waakye and worked in a chop
bar.
Because of the Community Day Schools intervention, students
like Apim are able to go from limited prospects to the fulfilment of personal
dreams that ultimately benefit the entire nation. Additionally, under the
Secondary Education Improvement Programme (SEIP), 10,400 students benefitted
from scholarships. 60% of the beneficiaries are young women, like Gertrude
Ahyia Yeboah, who is currently a student at St. Augustine's SHS in Bogoso in
the Western Region.
A critical assessment
of Ghana’s educational sector over the past years, when juxtaposed with the
some of the accounts rendered in the state of the nation address, leaves one in
no doubt concerning the sincerity of purpose and genuine intentions of Mr.
Mahama and his team towards the total
revamping of the sector.
The massive efforts the Mahama administration has put in the
educational sector by way of investments
in awesome infrastructural developments, improvement of tutor quality, access
to education for the poorest of the poor through provision of some essentials
like text books, exercise books, uniforms and sandals ( a situation that is
hard for most urban dwelling critics to comprehend ) and free tuition are clear
indices.
The administration’s remarkable strides in the quest to give
Ghana’s education a new, befitting, world class outlook is so vast that only a
fraction is captured in the following 8- page spotlight titled-
GHANA’S EDUCATION MAKES PROGRESS - NEW FACE OF EDUCATION.
In all fairness, the advances in this sector must be
commended as the foundation for a more progressive, visionary and objective
Ghana has been laid by this quest to inspire a new generation of forward looking
Ghanaians through provisions of globally accepted educational standards.
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