Napo with some heads of educational institutions after the workshop
MINISTER OF Education, Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh aka Napo, says it is wrong for any public second cycle institution to prevent students whose parents/guardians owe Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) dues from writing examination.
He has consequently cautioned heads of public second cycle institutions in the country not to sack any such students since such an action might incur the wrath of the Ghana Education Service (GES).
According to him, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government is determined to take away all barriers to education in the country “and preventing students from writing examination because they owed PTA dues is one of the barriers.”
He explained that his ministry is not banning the payment of PTA dues, suggesting that the school authorities should find a nice way to collect the monies from parents without having any negative effect on the students.
Napo was addressing heads of 720 public and private senior high schools (SHSs) which students have over the last few years performed abysmally at the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE.”
The one-day workshop which took place at the Anglican Senor High School (SHS) in Kumasi on Wednesday, was held at the instance of the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service (GES.)
Workshop Purpose
The meeting was geared towards identifying what is causing the 720 schools to perform poorly at the WASSCE so that an antidote could be found to help them improve their performance.
Napo said it is unacceptable for a sizeable number of schools in the country to perform poorly at the WASSCE, stressing that his ministry would team up with the GES to support the aforementioned schools to buck up in their performance.
Headmasters
He charged headmasters of the various SHSs to take responsibility for the poor performance of their schools, insisting that headmasters should play key roles in helping their schools to achieve impressive results at WASSCE.
According to him, his ministry is not impressed about the performance of some schools at the WASSCE, assuring that his outfit is prepared to support the poorly performed schools with incentives to improve.
Napo therefore urged heads of second cycle institutions to call for support from his ministry and the GES so that their WASSCE results would improve, saying, “We shall not take any excuse after their schools have performed poorly.”
According to Dr Opoku Prempeh, heads of educational institutions ought to provide inspirational and visionary leadership that would lead to their schools improving in their academic performance.
Teacher Motivation
The education minister stated that the NPP government values the key roles that teachers play in the training of students therefore it (government) would introduce several interventions to help motivate teachers to deliver.
He mentioned better salaries, promotion of teachers whose times are due and the introduction of affordable housing scheme as some of the new measures that would be adopted by government to help teachers to deliver.
FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi