Our education is in crisis – Prof Anamua-Mensah

Professor Jofus Anamua-Mensah, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), has backed the call for a review of primary and secondary education in Ghana with immediate well thought out measures to save it from collapse.

He said many children are not literate and numerate at their levels due to failure to provide the right input and resources, including well-qualified teachers with the right pedagogy.

“So if you are in third grade, you should be reading third grade books, but the majority are reading first grade books and few are studying second grade books,” he noted.

“We said everyone should be computer literate, but if you go to some junior high schools (JHS), there are no computers to do anything. So what do you teach? Are you helping them get digital knowledge?” he asked.

Professor Anamuah-Mensah in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) blamed the situation on the lack of proper training for teachers on the new standard basic school curriculum.

He said that although the structure and purpose of the new curriculum has the potential to transform primary education, the situation will remain precarious if teachers are not properly trained on the same.

“What is being done needs to be directed in such a way that the teachers who are teaching are very comfortable and confident in teaching what they are teaching, using the right approaches and pedagogy to do it, having the resources , they need to do it and have the support of the ministry and parents in their work,” he said.

At the secondary education level, Prof. Anamuah-Mensah noted that apart from lack of resources, it was a major problem of structure that resulted in many students failing examinations.

He argued that because JHS is part of a primary school, students tend to think as such and therefore struggle to cope in high school.

“It’s like a whole new atmosphere because the curriculum is different from what they were doing,” the former vice chancellor stressed.

He therefore called for the restructuring of secondary education to add JHS to SHS to realign the mindset of students.

“From junior high they will know that they are not really part of the primary school; they have moved up to a higher level in the Senior School.

“So JHS should have similar facilities as SHS. They should have teachers qualified to teach JHS and even be able to teach SHS,” he said.

Prof. Anamuah-Mensah acknowledged the efforts of Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, Minister of Education, in introducing such a system and expressed his support for the same.

Source: GNA