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General news for Friday, September 18, 2020
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2020-09-18
Sammy Gyamfi, National Communications Officer, NDC
The National Communication Officer of the Democratic National Congress (NDC) has said that the two-way policy under the Free SHS policy is a lazy approach that any leader will use to solve a “self-inflicted problem.”
Sammy Gyamfi argued in Paul Adom-Otchere’s Good Evening Ghana that with the implementation of the Free SHS, the NPP administration has failed to motivate teachers, provide learning materials to the various secondary schools, invest in infrastructure and ensure that the Contact hours in the different SHS are not reduced.
When told that Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, the Deputy Minister of Education had announced that the Free SHS two-way policy had increased contact hours in schools, Sammy Gyamfi replied: “He sat in his air-conditioned office , designed a dual political track that is actually a vague approach [at] solving a self-inflicted problem, and he is drawing conclusions based on the policy he made in his office. “
He continued: “I am telling you the reality in our schools today that contact hours have been significantly reduced. The facilities are not there, we are having a double track, parents are spending a lot of money on [extra] class fees … and therefore we are not getting the benefits that we should be getting from the Free SHS policy. “
For him, this lazy measure of a two-way system could have been avoided if private upper secondary schools had been included in the free SHS policy and the government had invested heavily in infrastructure.
The deputy minister had suggested that the NDC needs to study the Free SHS system and understand what the government meant by the two-way system because it has led to the semester system and a longer school day.
Dr. Yaw Osei Adumtwum explained to Paul Adom-Otchere on Tuesday that under the old trimester system, students go to school for nine months, while the new semester system under Free SHS allows students to spend eight months at school.
“When we were in the nine month quarter, the instructional hours per year were 1080 because [the] the school day was shorter because school starts at 8am and closes at 2pm and makes contact hours shorter per day. When moving to the semester system of four months each, students get one more hour each day due to the dual track … Schools had the opportunity to do it from 7.30 am to 3.30 pm … This led to more hours of 1134 contact with two semesters. How do you say that 1134 is less than 1080?
“Teachers had longer vacations, but made up for it due to the longer school day. In education we are not talking about contact days, we are talking about contact hours. Therefore, the system that gives teachers more time to work with students cannot be inferior to the system in which fewer hours are available. There is nothing in the double track that is contrary to student achievement in such a way that when you don’t have all your facilities, you want to get rid of them as if you were doing something bad to students. “
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