Arrest falling standards of education — Nduom

The flag bearer of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, has called for drastic and consistent measures to arrest the falling standards of education.
He said Ghana must first make education compulsory and employ “Educational Police” who would ensure that children of school age would take advantage of the free education programme from the kindergarten to the Senior High School and be in school.
Dr Nduom was addressing the press in Accra yesterday on the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results released last week.
“It is clear that something different needs to happen otherwise we will continue to slowly but surely create a huge class of unemployed, uneducated, disenchanted and potentially destructive young people who will also constitute the majority of the population,” he said.
He quoted the West African Examination Council’s (WAEC) report that said out of 320,000 students who sat the examination held in April this year, 50 per cent of them failed.
The council described the results as the worst in 10 years.
Dr Nduom put the blame on the shoulders of the bad policies of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administrations.
He added that although the 1992 Constitution demanded that there should be Free Compulsory Basic Education (FCUBE), the two political parties had failed to implement it, adding that “I am sorry to say that neither the NDC nor the NPP administration had implemented this. We do not have free and compulsory education in Ghana”.
Dr Nduom said just as the CPP government led by Dr Kwame Nkrumah did in the education sector during the 1960s, his administration would make education productive by putting in place the right facilities, motivate teachers, ensure that children were healthy and make parents responsible and attentive to the needs of their children.
He said all over the world education had been proven to be the factor that had fuelled dramatic climb to prosperity and on that score his administration would diligently ensure that all reforms were made to work.
Dr Nduom said a CPP government would offer opportunity to all Ghanaian youth to be trained for jobs in the fields of technology, tourism, petrochemicals, finance, among others.
He said the building of all school structures from kindergarten to senior high school would be standardised to include classrooms, toilet facilities, playgrounds, computer and science laboratories, kitchen, dining halls and sport facilities, as well as decent accommodation for teachers.
He said first, he would see to it that all funds meant for the GETFund were paid in so that together with the fund and other funds from the national revenue, the policy would be implemented.
Dr Nduom said under his administration teachers would be taken good care of, while the instances where newly trained teachers wait for years before receiving their salaries would be a thing of the past.
He said teachers would be afforded facilities to own their own house through low interest loans, as well as support financial institutions to assist teachers purchase household goods and information technology products to improve their lives.