GNACOPS calls for restructuring of education system

The Ghana National Council of Private Schools (GNACOPS) has called for a total restructuring of the country’s educational system to effectively deal with societal challenges.

The country’s educational system, the Council said, which was content-based, instructional and assessment system had failed to equip students with the skills needed to solve societal needs.

This was disclosed to the Ghanaian Times by the Executive Director of the Council, Mr Enoch Kwasi Gyetuah, in an exclusive telephone interview on the discussion of the country’s educational structure and how it had helped in solving its societal needs.

He further explained that due to the content assessment base of our educational system, most educational institutions are forced to provide students with rote learning in order to be seen as reputable one.

Mr Gyetuah also blamed the West African Examination Council (WAEC) for failing to develop an assessment system that will not only assess students on content intelligence but also on skills, production and behavioral intelligence.

The Executive Director, therefore, called for the establishment of an assessment unit that would ensure the total development of students.

Mr Gyetuah, described the non-availability of textbooks for teachers to use ahead of the new academic calendar as disturbing.

“It is very disturbing for schools not to have available textbooks to facilitate teaching and learning. However, textbooks should not be the focus of our discussion as a country now because the textbooks that we have been using for ages have still not been able to solve the societal challenges that we have,” he said.

Mr Gyetuah further proposed for the adoption of a national language to be used as instructional language at schools to help in improving the understanding of students.

“There is also the need for us to have our own national language which will be used as an instructional language for the delivery of our education which is so simple because it is just a matter of parading all the languages we have and looking at the one which has more vocabulary,” the Executive Director said.

Mr Gyetuah commended the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Ghana Education Service (GES) for reversing its decision to introduce the semester system at the pre-tertiary level to replace the trimester system.