John Mahama
Former President John Mahama has lambasted Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum for threatening to close down non-performing schools in the country.
This was after the minister recently stated that non-performing schools will be closed down and affected students will be distributed to nearby schools for them to continue their education and become relevant to the nation.
The Education Minister thereby charged the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) and Principals of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions to improve their educational outcomes or stand the risk of having their institutions closed down.
According to Dr Adutwum, a school with a consistent zero to 10 percent pass rate should put together intervention programmes to ensure that majority of their students will find opportunities for further studies, rather than becoming a liability to their parents and society due to their inability to pass their exam.
He believes that closing down such schools would help save the nation from the huge financial losses being incurred by the government on such schools.
However, interacting with delegates at Ahafo Ano South constituency in the Ashanti region as part of his campaign tour of the Region over the weekend, Mahama described the education minister’s move as “nonsensical”.
“Last week, I overheard that the Education Minister said he will closed down underperforming schools. Immediately I asked myself what kind of government is this.
“The government must rather assess reasons why the schools are not performing. Maybe they don’t have adequate teachers or furniture to make learning easy, so they can perform but he wants to close down the schools and distribute the children to other schools than fixing the problem.
“The suggestion by the education minister to close down non-performing schools and enroll the students in other schools is unacceptable and nonsensical,” he said.
The former president therefore asked the Minister to resign if he does not have any solution to the country’s educational problems.
“Help them achieve better results and provide better education for the children, but don’t you dare close schools. The Minister for Education should resign if his only solution to a problem is to close schools,” he said.
By Vincent Kubi