Investigate failure to distribute 12.1 million exercise book - Prof Oduro

Professor George K. T. Oduro, Director of the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA), has called for urgent investigations into circumstances that led to the failure of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to distribute 12.1 million books produced at the cost of GH¢7.1 million to schools, last year.

“In a situation where teachers and producers of teachers are constantly blamed for non-performance leading to abysmal pupil performance in schools, it is unpardonable for the GES to continue keeping such exercise books at their headquarters when teachers need them to promote learning through children’s exercises”, he said.

Prof Oduro was speaking at the fifth congregation of the Offinso College of Education at Offinso near Kumasi.

He said he had no doubt that if efficiency was demonstrated in the implementation of the logistics distribution policy, making sure that exercise books, desks and capitation grant among other essentials reached schools on schedule, the level of teacher non-performance and pupils’ outcomes would improve.

“This is a matter that should be of concern to civil society and other stakeholders in the education sector.”

He said although there had been significant progress in terms of quantitative expansion of infrastructure and increases in enrolment, the same could not be said about quality.

“We still grapple with the challenge of promoting and improving quality education delivery in our schools and ensuring excellence in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills development.”

This, he said, was evident in the 2011 National Education Assessment (NEA) results where only 18.2 per cent of Primary-Three pupils tested in mathematics obtained the minimum proficiency score of 55 per cent, while 24.2 per cent of Primary-Three and 35.3 per cent of Primary- Six pupils tested in English obtained the minimum proficiency score of 35 per cent in the assessment.

Prof Oduro said considering that basic education provides the foundation for quality senior high and tertiary studies, these results should be a source of worry to the Colleges of Education whose mandate was to develop teachers for the promotion of learning in basic schools.

He said it called for not only rethinking of the current over-emphasis on examination focused teacher education, but also raised an issue about the extent to which the Colleges were able to follow-up their products to ensure that they put into practice the training they received.

He reminded the colleges that it was only when they continued to maintain close links with the GES that the relevance of their upgraded curricula could be beneficial to the teaching and learning needs of school children.

Prof Oduro asked the graduating teachers to pride themselves as trained teachers in their schools while at the same time serve as positive role models for their colleagues.

Mr. Lloyd Alexander Djangmah, Principal of the Institute, complained about the growing indiscipline among the students, saying that many of them often went out without permission and stayed out of lectures.

His also expressed concern about inadequate residential accommodation for the lecturers, washrooms and bad roads running through the campus and said these needed to be tackled.

In all 252 students graduated.