Otuo Serebour Opoku-Ware
The emergence of a General Arts student of Opoku Ware Senior High School (SHS) in Kumasi as Valedictorian in Engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) last week transmits a serious message to policymakers in the education sector to consider necessary reforms.
Otuo Serebour Opoku-Ware topped his Electrical Engineering class at the KNUST and therefore became the valedictorian of his graduating class.
His preference for studying an Engineering related course at the tertiary level pushed him to study Physics part time, and this paved the way for his eventual admission to study Electrical Engineering. Many at the time would have wondered how that came to being.
He did not want to follow any course in the humanities, feeling inside him that his future lied in Engineering.
At the SHS level, he would have been denied his preference for the General Science option, hence the General Arts option which he pursued unwillingly.
His story is not unique as there are a few examples. Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor was also a General Arts student in secondary school. When he went abroad for further studies, he successfully switched over to Medicine, qualifying in the end as one of Ghana’s top physicians and even heading the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) as President.
There are countless instances where students have been denied courses of their choice by school authorities because they do not fit.
The foregone stories therefore tell us that we should reset our educational system, especially at the SHS level.
An effective counseling system in schools should be able to have students change their courses.
The former Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, we recall came up with a system to enable students change their courses. This, we have learnt, has been aborted much to the detriment of students. A rethink is important given the examples contained in this commentary. There are many which we have not heard about.
A young lady was recently offered Home Economics in one of the top schools in the country when her preference was General Science. But for the intervention of a public official, she would have been compelled to continue to do what she is uninterested in and missing out on her talent.
Let the school authorities listen to the students, especially mid-way through their first year, so that should they wish to change courses this can be done without unnecessary hassle.
An overhaul consideration of the educational system would enable us to support students to make the best of their talents.
Time was it when students who offered to read Medicine or Law were asked during interview whether they had doctors or lawyers in their families. Such antiquated and discriminatory approaches should have no place in our educational system, not at all.
Let all with the potential to follow their course choices be allowed to do so without hindrance.
It is for this reason that we commend the Attorney General’s recent announcement to make Law more accessible to Ghanaians than the current system which is not only discriminatory but unnecessarily cumbersome.
Here is to therefore ask that the arrangement to have one national bar examination among other reforms expedited so those who want to become lawyers can do so without being asked whether there are learned gentlemen in their families.