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So, we don’t have class?
On November 25th, the Ghana Education Service (GES) made it quite clear that December 7th would not be a public holiday. “It is to be noted that Wednesday, 7th December, 2016 is not a holiday, therefore all teachers, students and educational workers are supposed to be at post after voting,” the press release noted. Fair enough. You can, then, imagine the confusion among students, teachers, and others when GES Public Relations Officer, Reverend Jonathan Bettey, came back a few days later singing a different tune: “Election day is a day-off for all teachers and students in our schools across the country. Everybody—teachers and pupils—are given this off-day to enable them to exercise their franchise and also make our environment serene for the exercise to be carried out.” And this makes a lot more sense, given the fact that many teachers will be serving as election officials on Wednesday. Some have speculated that the U-turn was in response to a petition sent to President Mahama encouraging him to declare Election Day a holiday.
This week in compulsory Arabic
As mentioned in previous weeks, the GES has (maybe?) moved to make Arabic a mandatory part of the education curriculum in Ghana. While it isn’t exactly clear yet if Arabic will become a prerequisite for graduation, the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) has recruited 6,500 Arabic teachers under the Youth in Arabic Education Module—a program designed to “augment, improve, and also promote the learning of Arabic and Islamic education.” YEA has said that it intends to work closely with the GES and plans to integrate the new teachers into the GES after two years of participating in the program.
Useful perspective
It is easy to get discouraged by the amount of negativity that one would likely find when reading about the state of education in Ghana, and sub-Saharan Africa more generally. So it was refreshing when Princewell Omoroguiwa, Founder of the Simon Page College of Marketing, gave a speech at the Ghana Technology University College (GTUC). “In many countries including or perhaps in Nigeria, studying in Ghana has become a guarantee of good quality and uninterrupted education,” he said. Especially during an election, when hopeful candidates try to highlight the number of problems in Ghana to secure votes, it is important to remain cognizant that while things certainly aren’t perfect, it’s not all gloom either.
That being said…
During a recent debate organized by the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) and the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), four candidates for president responded with a “no” to the question of whether Ghana’s current educational system “adequately prepared students for industry and national development.” President Mahama, while responding “no,” sought to clarify that despite his answer, much progress has been made. Mahama continued by saying “businesses and industries are asking for new skills but the institutions are not turning fast enough to produce what the industry needs…innovative, practical, hands on people.”
Also…
The second article in a two-part series dissecting the political party manifestos on education. (Part 1 here)
An article on graduate unemployment and the difficulties job-seekers face.
An op-ed aimed at improving education in Liberia compliments the GES’s role as an education regulator.
An article looking at the important issues in the upcoming election touches briefly on education.
The Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection is campaigning to “make education safe for all.”
Airtel Ghana employees have donated Christmas gifts for over 1,400 pupils of the La Wireless Cluster of Schools in Accra.
The Upper East Region has called for policy makers to review the education curriculum, hoping for stronger reading competency.