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Opoku-Prempeh wants a longer school day
Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, the Minister of Education, has requested the National Council for Curriculum Assessment to consider increasing the length of the school day. “School closes too early in this country… why can’t schools close at 4PM?” Opoku-Prempeh, legitimately, complains that the status quo (a day ending at 2PM) puts an undue burden on families because parents have to either leave work early or make arrangements, which can often be expensive. Accordingly, he reasoned that a longer school day would help aid the accessibility goal of the Free SHS program by reducing the number of barriers preventing students from enrolling.
Opoku-Prempeh holds officials accountable
It was another active week for Opoku-Prempeh. In addition to his remarks on a longer school day, he called 70 Ministry of Education (MoE) officials before Parliament to explain infractions they created in the 2015 Auditor-General’s Report. The issues with the report included unapproved/unjustified disbursements, unrepresented payments vouchers, unauthorized use of funds, and unauthorized purchases. It turned out that most of the directors went back and balanced the books after they were “invited” to appear before Parliament. A reminder that there’s still a lot of progress to be made.
Room for improvement in enrollments
Apparently age is just a number in Ghanaian schools: Fakor Disu, Coordinator of the Communication for Development (C4D) of the Ghana Education Service (GES), revealed that over 20 percent of children have not enrolled in Kindergarten at the proper age (four years old). Disu said there is plenty of blame to go around and that all shareholders need to do their part to bring that number down.
Also…
Op-ed encouraging schools to play a bigger role in educating students about sanitation.
(Another) Op-ed about the need for an increased emphasis on sexual and reproductive health education.
Brief story highlighting the actions of a couple education Public Relations Officers (PRO).