2024/2025 academic calendar for SHS will suffer another epileptic distortion -Kwami Alorvi predicts

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Education Committee member and one of the spokespersons on education, Kwami Alorvi, has written extensively on his party’s 2024 agenda (resetting Ghana manifesto) for Ghanaians, specifically on education predicting that the 2024/2025 academic calendar for SHS will suffer another epileptic distortion.

Kwami Alorvi, in his submission on the issues of Ghana’s education, said it will be presented in a series. In this series (the first series), he made it clear that he will outline “the challenges confronting Ghana’s education system that the NDC Resetting Ghana Manifesto 2024 on education seeks to address.”

He promised to come back with Series Two which will outline the flagship policies of the NDC at the basic, secondary, and tertiary levels.

Full text of Kwami Alorvi’s First Series one education from his party’s perspective 

KWAMI ALORVI WRITES: NDC’S RESETTING GHANA MANIFESTO ON EDUCATION, 2024, AND YOU

SERIES ONE

INTRODUCTION

Quality education is an important tool in nation-building. Its contribution is seen in the political and socio-economic development of a nation.

Quality education, among others, creates the human capital of a nation, thereby enhancing its productivity and global competitiveness. Quality education further guarantees social mobility by reducing inequality and preserving national values and the well-being of citizens.

It is in the light of the above roles played by education that the Education Committee of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) brings the party’s Resetting Ghana Manifesto, 2024 on education to the attention of all Ghanaians who genuinely desire to see the deep wounds inflicted on Ghana’s education by the current NPP Government healed. This will be done in a series of presentations.

This first series outlines the challenges confronting Ghana’s education system that the NDC Resetting Ghana Manifesto 2024 on education seeks to address.

WHAT NEEDS RESETTING

The previous NDC government worked hard to enhance Ghana’s education system through significant investment in infrastructure, curriculum reforms, teacher motivation, and social interventions that expanded access and improved the quality of teaching and learning outcomes.

Regrettably, the current Akufo Addo/Bawumia NPP government has superintended a marked decline in the sector over the past eight (8) years through poor implementation of policies and wasteful expenditure.

The running down of the education sector is evidenced by acute infrastructural deficit at all levels, resulting in overcrowding in classrooms and lecture halls, the double-track system in SHSs and Colleges of Education, an erratic and epileptic academic calendar where parents, teachers, and students get to know when schools are resuming and vacating at short notices, abrupt changes in the calendar, and frequent and prolonged industrial actions in tertiary institutions, most of which remain unresolved.

A typical example of this epileptic academic calendar is the 2024/2025 one issued by the GES on October 16, 2024. In that calendar, the current SHS1 students in double-track schools who reported to school on 30th September 2024 or thereabout are to vacate on 28th October 2024 for the end of their second semester and be promoted to SHS2 immediately for the next academic year. This means the students would have spent less than one calendar month in school and will have no holiday before commencing the 2024/2025 academic year.

Again, candidates for the 2024 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) finished their examinations on 7th July 2024. As of the time of writing this series on 19th October 2024, their results have not been released by WAEC, and neither has the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) released the schools they have been placed in.

Yet, the epileptic academic calendar released to the general public indicates that these incoming fresh SHS1 students are to report to school on 30th October 2024, to begin the 2024/2025 academic year.

It is a notorious fact that when school placements are released, there are a lot of challenges, including, but not limited to, many students not being placed in any school of their choice and who have to do self-placements. Others seek changes in schools. Less than two weeks to reopening of schools when school placements are not released, how does the GES expect parents to be able to prepare their wards to report to school on 30th October 2024? Nobody needs any clairvoyant to tell Ghanaians that this 2024/2025 academic calendar will suffer another epileptic distortion.

The current SHS2 students going to SHS3 in single-track schools are also to report in school for the 2024/2025 academic year on 30th October 2024, while their counterparts in double-track schools are to wait until 3rd January 2025 to start the academic year.

Basic education has suffered eight years of neglect, leading to dilapidated structures, an increase in the number of schools under trees to over 5000, and a lack of furniture for over one million (1,000,000) pupils.

Basic schools lack the required number of textbooks six years after the introduction of a new curriculum, while capitation grants, the only source of funding at the basic schools, have been in arrears for over eight terms.

The school feeding program at the basic schools has been appallingly managed, resulting in poor diets and inadequate food for pupils due to the NPP Government’s huge indebtedness to caterers.

At the Senior High Schools (SHSs), the poor and haphazard implementation of the free SHS policy has inflicted deep wounds on secondary education. Poor funding arrangements and wrong prioritization of expenditure have resulted in acute infrastructure deficits – classrooms, dormitories, dining halls, and assembly halls – culminating in overcrowding and a double-track system. These erratic and epileptic academic calendars have imposed huge additional costs on parents who have to hire teachers to teach their wards during prolonged vacations. Teachers and school managers, together with their kitchen staff, have been denied their vacation rest periods.

Lack of a dedicated source of funding for the free SHS, apart from creating infrastructure deficits, has also resulted in poor quality and low quantity of food for the students, a situation which has been exacerbated by a centralized food procurement system riddled with corruption in the supply of food items to schools. Heads of school and teachers who have dared to voice out the challenges associated with the poor implementation of the free SHS policy have been harassed, threatened with transfer and removal from office, and, or, actually hounded out of office.

At the tertiary level, governance structures have been violently interfered with and abused. The removal of Prof. Mawutor Avoke and Dr. Theophilus Senyo Ackorlie of the University of Education, Winneba, Prof. Lawrence Atepor of Cape Coast Technical University, Dr. W. S. K. Dzisah of the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ), and Prof. Shine Dzisi of the Koforidua Technical University from office when the NPP took over in 2017 quickly comes to mind and leaves a sordid scar on the conscience of the nation. These officers were Vice Chancellors, Rectors, and a Finance Officer and not regular faculty staff who were removed from office with little regard to provisions in the statutes of their respective institutions. In Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), the interference in the governance structure for political reasons by the Akufo Addo/Bawumia NPP Government would have resulted in the ousting out of office of the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Kwasi Obiri-Danso had the baobab hands of the Chancellor, Asantehene Otumfour Osei Tutu II, not shielded him from the sinister claws of this marauding monster.

The poor industrial relations between the NPP government and the tertiary institutions have also led to frequent, prolonged, and unresolved strikes by many unions within the space that affects the academic calendar and teaching.

The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), a social intervention fund that has been established by the NDC Government for education funding in the country, has been recklessly used as collateral by the NPP Government to secure a loan. The residual funds of the GETFund have been capped, leaving little for the education funding for which the fund has been established.

These challenges and many more are what the NDC Resetting Ghana Manifesto 2024, on education, seeks to address

The second and subsequent series, therefore, will outline the policies of the NDC aimed at resetting Ghana’s failing education system. I invite you to follow me on these series to understand how the NDC Manifesto on Education seeks to reset the system to address these challenges, and restore a system that nurtures talent, fosters innovation and equip students with the relevant skills for the fast changing job market in a globally competitive world.

Collectively, we can work to create the Ghana We Want Together.

Watch out for Series Two, which outlines the flagship policies at the basic, secondary, and tertiary levels.

Dated: Friday, 18th October 2024.

SOURCE: Coverghana.com.gh