It’s senseless to deny a student with B2 in French, D7 in Maths admission to read French – Kofi Asare

The Executive Director of the Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, has supported a directive given by the Minister of Education Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum to universities to admit students with grade D7.

Mr Asare stated that it does not make sense for students with grade D7 in Mathematics and B2, or even an A in French, to be denied admission to read French related courses because they had a weak pass in Mathematics.

He said there is no correlation between French and Mathematics hence, such students should not be denied admission.

“A student wants to specialise in French and you say that you need a minimum of C6 in Mathematics. It doesn’t make sense because there is virtually no correlation between French and a D7 in mathematics.

“One will not be able to make it to any university if they had D7 in mathematics, it doesn’t make sense. In fact, D7 is a pass according to the assessment body,” he said.

Speaking at the swearing-in and inauguration of Governing Councils of some public technical Universities, Dr Yaw Osei Aduwtum charged the schools to innovate and create access programmes for such students.

He said “Our gross tertiary enrollment ratio is 18.8%, South Korea is 73.6%, so no nation has been able to show transformation without hitting 40 to 50% tertiary enrollment ratio.

“Mauritius is 40%, you go there and everything is changing. Our 18% will not change Ghana and that is why the President has set an agenda of 40%, what it also means is that you have to start looking at your programmes, more diploma programmes so that students sitting home with D7 will find a place in your institution.”

“There are institutions that are saying we are not getting the numbers but what happened to support students offering courses in diploma, electrical engineering and after that, you’re going to see the numbers going up and after that, they can go to work. And then if they want to continue they can continue. So we shouldn’t see D7 as a barrier for students accessing tertiary,” he added.