Open Letter

To the President, Parliament, and People of Ghana

EDUCATION REFORMS
The issue of education reforms in Ghana - in particular whether 3 years or 4 years is the “best”
duration for the SHS/SS – is so crucial for the future of our nation that, as a parent and a good
citizen, I am taking money from my own pocket to get this piece published so as to engage fellow
citizens and policy makers on the key decisions that we need to tackle head on, if we must avoid
doom for our children, and their children in this fast moving global environment.

1. The one logical key step Ghana needs to take is to immediately get out of the 1980’s so-
called “educational reforms” of the JSS-SSS (JHS-SHS) programme altogether(well-
intentioned as they may have been). It has been a 25-year old mistake! Ghana needs to
return to the superior, time-tested, workable system of:

 Secondary School (“O”-Level)

 Sixth Form (“A”-Level)
 Polytechnic/Technical
 University

With this, the duration structure for the 3 main routes of education (with minor
modifications) would look like this:
Teacher Compare
Academic Technical Training Current
- Pre-School 6 6 6 6
- Primary School 6 6 6 6
- Middle School (JSS/JHS) 3 3 3 3
- Secondary Sch. (“O”-Level) 5 5 5 3
20 20 20 18
- Sixth Form (“A”-Level) 2 - - -
- Technical (Diploma) - 2 - -
- Teacher Training (Diploma) - - 2 -
22 22 22 18
- University (1st Degree) 3 - 3 4
- HND - 3 - -
GRADUATE AGE 25 25 25 22
====== ====== ====== ==

The advantages of this structure to the child, parent and nation are so obvious and
numerous. Among these are:

 It keeps the children at school to maturity. The argument that a longer school life
costs “too much” is pathetic. We must not be the people who know the cost of
everything and the value of nothing. The saying is that “if you think education is
costly, try ignorance”.

 It eases pressure on the job market: No longer will the nation’s job market be
inundated with an annual mass of school leavers for whom no jobs exist. Don’t
we see the real cost of turning out these half-baked products that are straight
 away, unleashed onto society as armed robbers, “Sakawa” fraudsters and
prostitutes?

 Full Boarding at Secondary/Technical, Sixth Form and University levels must be

financed and made available for all students as it makes for full time utilization
for academic and extra curricular work Government and parents must find the
money. It is not by accident that Ghana, for all our differences, has not gone to
(not even come close) to civil war, unlike many others. The team-building,
unifying boarding school system of old, which most of our national leaders
benefited from, has much to do with this.

 As was the case before, only selected, capable schools would run the Sixth Form
programme – for the much fewer numbers, who would qualify and elect to take
this path. Resources would thus be better earmarked and deployed for this tier of
students to be polished and groomed in readiness for the more mature tertiary
level.

 Those who obtain the 2-year teacher Training Diploma would teach at the Basic
schools, while the graduate teachers (1st degree) would be teaching at the
secondary levels (“O”-Level and “A”-Level). Masters and PhD holders will
continue to handle teaching at the tertiary level.

 With the Sixth Forms and Technical/Polytechnics, pressure on University intake

would reduce drastically, as the situation where huge numbers of SSS/SHS
leavers are churned out all at once would cease. Entry would be for fewer
numbers applying in any academic year as more students would be retained at the
Sixth Form and Polytechnic levels.

 Also, as the duration of the first degree course also shortens back to 3 years,
university student numbers would fall back to the more manageable 3,000-5,000
range. In our day, Legon had less than a 3,000 student population, but today it is
over 25,000 – with virtually the same level of physical facilities!

2. All the so-called “community secondary schools” that were hurriedly set up with scant
regard for their resources requirements must be closed and absorbed into the more
established main secondary schools in the locality or region, whose boarding facilities
must thus, be expanded and improved for the larger numbers.

3. Major, major emphasis (80-90% of all financing) must be placed on Technical education
and Teacher training, if ever we are to make it as a nation. The requirements for today’s
economy are not graduates of the liberal arts and “reading subjects” but hands-on,
practical technical trainees like mechanics, engineers, doctors, etc. That’s how the
Malaysias, Korias and so on made it.

4. The Polytechnics must focus EXCLUSIVELY on technical training, and do away with all
the irrelevant “reading” HND/degrees like Marketing, Purchasing and Supply,
Management, Accounting, Secretarial, etc. What is there to market or supply? Chinese
toys and dog chains on the streets? Don’t we have enough of these “Managers”,
Secretaries and so on, walking the streets idly? Similarly, the Kwame Nkrumah
University of Science and Technology must focus on its founding role and drop all the
 Sociology, Law, Economics, etc. and run solely ICT, Engineering, Medicine and the like.
The wealth of nations is built on specialization and division of labour (Adam Smith).

5. Similarly, the recent proliferation of “universities” of all sorts all over the country needs
to be checked. Legon, KNUST, Cape Coast and, may be Winneba University should be
the only true universities for a small developing nation like Ghana. University
accreditation should be subject to very strict resource and capacity standards, backed by
decades of successful affiliation to a reputable university. A limited, select few of proven
high quality universities would attract much more foreign appeal, thus enabling Ghana to
reap the reward of earning valuable hard currency from foreign students. Earnings from
foreign students are Britain’s second largest export. Ghana could position itself similarly
in Africa.

6. At the basic level, the shift system must be done away with. How can we expect anything
meaningful from 4-hour school day for a pupil? The teachers are even more fed up with
it. (My wife is a teacher, so I know a thing or two about this). The school day must be a
full one (8 a.m. – 4 p.m., with 1 hour lunch break). This would allow for all-round
academic and character development of the child as time would be available for both
academic subjects and the all-important extra-curricular activities like sports, arts, etc.,
and thus save the 6-8 year old from selling “Ice Water” on the street as an after school
activity.

7. After 25 years now, no one is in any doubt that an “O”-Level holder of old, stands out as
a much more complete product than any of today’s half-baked so-called university
graduates who can hardly put a complete English sentence together or produce a simple
arithmetical calculation (never mind the SSS “graduates”, who are the tragic zero-quality,
mass-produced end products of the current “reforms”).

8. Modern day formal education as we know it was handed down to us by the British; who
have still held on to their much cherished, age-old “O”-Level and “A”-Level system. Any
wonder then, that as a nation, they are up there where they are, and we are even now
below where we were? We had better traced back our steps before it is too, too late for
our descendants. “Independence” does not mean we should through away the baby with
the bath water - as we did with the monetary unit (the Pound) and have since paid dearly
for that.

9. How often has it not been said that “education is the bedrock of national development”?
So if you have a country that seems to take delight in tinkering with this bedrock at the
slightest political opportunity, then surely, it is easy to see why Ghana has remained
where we are for so long! The structure and development of a nation’s educational
system must NOT be hinged on the opinions of politicians (petty and whimsical as we
know they are), nor be driven by the manifestos of political parties in power. It must be
the product of objective, scientific research backed by ages of practice and experience;
which thankfully, the British have given us in the form of the “O”-Level/”A”-Level
system.

God bless Ghana.

By a parent and good citizen (Tel. 0277- )