Mahama doesn’t understand education, he will destroy free SHS - Adutwum
- A deputy education minister, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, warns that secondary education in Ghana will be under threat should Mahama recapture power
- Mahama vows to abolish the double-track system in his first year as president of Ghana
- The system was introduced to create room to accommodate the increase in enrolment
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The pledge by the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, to abolish the double-track policy will send secondary education in the country into a tailspin.
Mahama vowed to make the policy a thing of the past in his first year as president of Ghana by completing the remainder of the 200 Community Day Senior High Schools he had started before losing the 2016 presidential elections to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
He also pledged to extend the free SHS policy to private schools in Ghana’s deprived communities to ensure a one-track qualitative learning experience.
Source: UGC
Reacting to the pledges of the former president, a Deputy Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum bemoaned Mahama’s lack of understanding of Ghana’s educational system.
He said Mahama’s proposal “will destroy Senior High School as we know it.” “Where are you sending them to?” he queried.
A major campaign promise by the then opposition leader, President Akufo-Addo, the free SHS policy was launched in 2017. A little over 400,000 students benefited from the policy in its first year of implementation.
The double-track system is similar to the semester mode of learning applicable in the universities at the SHS level.
The objective of the system introduced in 2018 was to create room to accommodate the increase in enrolment, increase contact hours as well as reduce class sizes.
The system is very popular in Australia, Costa Rica, Japan, some schools in the US, and Kenya.
Meanwhile, President Akufo-Addo said critics of the free SHS had been put to shame by the sterling performance of the first beneficiaries of the policy.
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) on Friday, November 13, 2020, released interim results of candidates who sat for the WASSCE in 2020.
Analysis of the results had shown massive improvements in the performance of candidates as compared to the 2019 batch.
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Source: YEN.com.gh
