Dr. George Mawusi Afeti, Secretary General of the Commonwealth Association of Polytechnics in Africa (CAPA), has called for the affiliation of Community Senior High Schools to their better endowed counterparts for visibility.
"This arrangement will promote easy teacher deployment between the schools, enable the effective sharing of educational resources and enhance the image of the less endowed community senior high school and consequently bring about higher enrollment"
Dr. Afeti, former Principal of the Ho Polytechnic, was addressing the just ended 47th annual Conference of the Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) in Ho under the theme: "Senior High School Education in Ghana: The challenges and the way forward."
He explained:"In practice, affiliation would mean that the head of the better endowed school would exercise supervisory role over the junior partner mainly with regard to academic matters including teaching and learning activities and examinations. The two schools would also operate under the same administrative setup."
Dr. Afeti said with hard work and targeted support from government, affiliated community schools that would have improved significantly academically would then regain independence.
He said the arrangement should not be misinterpreted as a disdain for community senior high schools but "a call for the democratization of SHS education, not only for equity of access but also equity of outcomes and equity of progression to higher education and transition into the world of work".
"The fact is that a school with a good image and good academic standards will attract learners from all over the country no matter where it is located." Dr. Afeti asserted.
He said some people "may be revolted by the idea of public school charging tuition or academic user fees, but such payments and schooling options already exist under different forms and guises."
"We cannot continue to espouse the mantra of absolute cost free education when the national reality is a SHS education system with frozen enrolment capacity that can hardly absorb 50 percent of JHS leavers." Dr. Afeti said UNESCO's Gross Enrolment Ratios (GER) which compared access to Senior Secondary Schools among young people between 15-18 years showed that Ghana's GER stood at 20.8 percent compared with 24 percent in Kenya, 32.9 percent for Nigeria, 51.8 percent in Botswana, 53.7 percent for Cape Verde, 70.6 percent for Mauritius and 78.2 percent for South Africa.
He said there were many compelling reasons for increasing access to SHS education in Ghana which included the fact that enrollments were increasing at the primary and junior high school levels and the fact that increased access to SHS impacts positively on higher human capital formation.
<<Print>>