By Elizabeth Larkwor Baah
Tema, Dec. 23, GNA - Mr. Richard Kwashi Kovey, Convener for the Campaign Against Privatization and Commercialisation of Education (CAPCOE), has called on President-elect John Dramani Mahama to fulfill his promise of canceling ex-gratia payment and use the money to provide school infrastructure.
Mr. Kovey said such monies could be used to build school blocks and equip them with modern learning equipment to help build a sustainable foundation for economic growth and resilience in the long term.
In an interview, he told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the president-elect must take immediate steps to amend the 1992 Constitution, specifically Article 71, to eliminate abuse of power and intimidation and ensure proper accountability.
He also called for the end to the purchase of luxury vehicles for government appointees and parliamentarians every four years, stressing that “let’s learn from the likes of Canada, where MPs go to parliament with bicycles.”
Mr. Kovey mentioned that studies conducted by CAPCOE under Education International in partnership with Africa Education Watch with support from FES Ghana and OXFAM Ghana, revealed huge infrastructure deficits and poor resource allocation, indicating very poor investment at the pre-tertiary level of education.
He said over 5000 schools operate under trees and in dilapidated structures, which did not only affect quality of learning but also put the learner at risk of the trees falling, collapsing of the dilapidated structures and reptiles falling from the trees on the students.
He further said that over 4000 primary schools were without Junior High Schools (JHS), which truncate their transition from primary to JHS, and results in high dropout rates over the years.
He added that there were several communities without public schools leading to the children walking several miles to access education.
The CAPCOE Convener added that poor and unhygienic kindergarten blocks were also exposing the children to high levels of infection such as Respiratory Tract Infections and other diseases.
“This phenomenon largely excludes girls from accessing education as it expose them to threats of sexual harassment and assault on their way to school. The situation also deprives children from enrolling at the right age adding up to the numbers of out of school children in Ghana which stands at an estimated 1.2 million children according to Ghana Statistical Service report 2023,” he stated.
According to him, the unavailability of accommodation for teachers to be closer to their station for proper monitoring of students was another worrying trend, adding that the unavailability of assistive technology devices to aid learning for students with disability, and the inadequate deployment of resources to teachers to help students with special needs were hindering education in Ghana .
He called for urgent expansion in infrastructure to reduce class sizes, and the tackling of classroom infrastructure deficit in senior high schools which must include dormitories, laboratories, libraries, and classrooms to end the double track system.
Mr. Kovey also called for restructuring of programmes and content of tertiary education to train students to become highly skilled to create their own jobs, especially in the technical universities.
He further indicated that Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions must also be equipped with modern artificial intelligence tools to train students to be creative and innovative to add value to the natural resources in an environmentally friendly manner.
“We must have a broader stakeholder consultation to review the Free SHS policy to make it cost effective to deliver quality secondary education,” he stated.
He called for the motivation of teachers to encourage and produce confident, and self- directed learners, adding that provision of relevant curriculum content was needed to address the needs of the Ghanaian learners as according to him, although Ghana had undertaken a number of curriculum reforms within the fourth republic, none of them had addressed the needs of the learner.
GNA