It seems like the evidence indicting the quality of education in Ghana keeps mounting up. The shock over the abysmal performances in the WASSCE has yet to subside before a new survey has surfaced damning early basic education.
The beginnings of a person’s education is crucial because that is the stage the foundation for later education is built, and we all know a shaky foundation often leads to a faulty building.
There is a reason Mathematics has been a drawback for most WASSCE candidates for a while now, and it’s because the basics of the subject are often butchered, leaving the student forever handicapped in comprehending the more complex aspects of Maths that crop up from the Senior High School level upwards.
It seems like English is getting that treatment now, as a recent survey has revealed that 98% of students in Primary Two cannot read, and/or understand the English language.
The average age of a pupil in Class two is seven or eight years, whilst the main medium of teaching from Primary One onwards is the English Language. Therefore we have teachers regularly teaching practically an entire class who can barely understand a word they’re saying.
This is a pretty damaging report, carried out by Assessment Services Unit of the Ghana Education Service, with support from Research Triangle International.
You have to wonder what kind of education we are giving our children when they cannot even understand what their teachers are saying. And as I mentioned earlier the formative years are so crucial, making this current situation untenable as far as providing quality education for generations coming up.
We often wonder at the cluelessness of our leaders and how we remain underdeveloped so many years after independence and with a fairly sizable chunk of the world’s mineral wealth, and it is because the human resource of this country is one of the poorest the world over. Brilliant minds build nations, and with the quality of education, evidenced by this survey and the recent WASSCE results- should we really be so surprised that we continue to move backwards as a nation?
There is much that has to change about education in Ghana, starting with the bias towards the theoretical rather than the practical; but we cannot have children being held back so early in their lives.
The fact that the Ghana Education Service itself carried out this survey should suggest they should have some plans towards solving it. I would hope so, though being a problem being handled by Ghanaian politicians I wouldn’t hold my breath. Still, the things you pick up early stay with you for a long time after; but it seems for pupils in the lower basic school they’re going through the system practically empty- and no serious nation would put up with a situation like that.
This shouldn’t be happening now. We are in the media age and there are several aids to help these kids inside and outside of the classroom learn English. Yet the corruption at the ministry of education makes it impossible to introduce these systems in the schools. Like the proverbial dog in the manger, the ministry doesn’t have the know how to implement this. The chief director is illiterate when it comes to such things. He can barely use his galaxy s5. How can he advise the minister on such issues. This is the problem with the country. Uneducated personnel with archaic degrees overseeing modern education. I weep for these kids. Through no fault of theirs they’ve been born in a country that cares very little about their future. Most of their teachers and principals care more about their haircuts, uniforms and appearance than what they are actually learning. There are several ways this situation can be solved. It has been proven that people who don’t speak English upon emigrating to North America learn to speak it by watching television and other programs in months. And these are adults. The kids even pick it up faster. Which means these kids can be taught by using similar methods. Watching these educational programs can help them. And it doesn’t cost the government that much. But such ideas don’t exist in minds of chief directors in Ghana. Their cups are already full. And not with relevant information but rather how they are going to steal some of the nations wealth for their retirement. At any point in the day the chief directors are scheming to steal. Then they break for lunch to think about how much goat meat should cover their fufu. Then back to scheming to steal.
You talk about primary school kids; have you heard some of politicians speak English? You can barely tell they’ve been to school…and these are the kind of people leading the country.
So let me ask, can they read any of the local languages or a predominant one besides english? I fully understand English is essential to compete in this global economy. At the same time, i see far too many Asians, Arabs etc who can’t read or write in English either and yet they are successful. Colonization taught us what…? To adopt everything but our own. Why is Korean the most innovative country in the world? Their literacy rate is not based on English but their own.