Public tertiary institutions are likely to practise a triple-track system, considering the legion of graduates from the senior high schools as a result of the double-track free SHS education.
Dr Yaw Acheampong, a lecturer at GIMPA, told a Tema-based radio station Tuesday that the triple-track public tertiary education could be a reality for there are scarce infrastructures to contain the graduates from the senior high schools, after a year when the first batch graduate.
He held the argument that the free SHS policy was not well thought of before rolling it by the government, and further argued that the “wholesale implementation of the policy is drastically affecting the quality of education.”
He said: “Progressively free education, which the previous government was practising, was a better option whilst it ensured that it provided the needed infrastructures at the various higher level of education.
“For example, the previous government started experimenting the curriculum whilst it practised the progressively free senior high school education. Whilst doing that and the new infrastructures springing up, the free SHS could have experimented in a couple of schools concurrently with progressively,” the Educationist drew the difference between the education policies and directions of the two leading political parties in Ghana.
He was emphatic that the present NPP government is fast destroying Ghana’s education with its populist programme “because teachers are complaining of pressure, which is affecting proper tuition and resulting in the sharp decline in education.”
He went on to argue that stakeholders’ meeting was not held before the rolling out of the “bitter and failed” policy, therefore, the reason non of the persons in government have their wards in any of the public SHSs.
“They have their children in international SHSs because they know what they are giving the poor and average Ghanaian is just for political gains. So that people will say they have fulfilled their campaign promise, they have badly thrown this bad policy to Ghanaians,” he posited.
Sharply, he said that there are too many irrelevant policies in education, citing change of school uniforms and government’s move to change the composition and status of university council and change of names of public universities as few examples.
On government’s interference in university education, he said: “University councils are semi-autonomous body in the world over, therefore, the government’s move to manipulate and control the university landscape is a wrong footing. We have had enough of this political interference.”
Story by Umar Sheriff / awakenewsonline.com