Teachers have to be trained in ways that they will develop the enthusiasm to go to places especially rural areas to teach, Ghanaian educationist, teacher, columnist, and author, Anis Haffar has said.
He says he is particularly interested in how teachers are produced in Ghana..
In order to address the disparity in the teacher deployment, Mr Anis Haffar stated “We have to raise our teachers with the enthusiasm to go to the places to teach.”
He further underscored the importance of ICT as part of the education system in Ghana.
To that end, he said that the current One Student, One Laptop initiative should be taken seriously.
“We have to take it seriously,” he said during a national dialogue organized by Media General and STAR-Ghana on Thursday, April 4.
Also speaking at the same event, the Executive Director of the Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, attributed dropout at the Junior High School level to the distance between where the pupils live and the schools, especially in rural areas.
He indicated that some of the students have had to walk for kilometers in order to reach their schools. “This is a disincentive for them to continue,” he said.
Furthermore, he said, the lack of junior high schools in most rural areas is a factor causing the dropout.
Speaking at a national dialogue session organized by Media General and STAR-Ghana on Thursday, April 4, he said “Distance, lack of junior high schools are factors for the dip from P6 and JHS 1.”
The third factor he identified is the disparity in teacher deployment. He noted that the unavailability of teachers in rural areas is causing the high dropout rate.
The Public Relations Officer of the Ministry of Education, Kwasi Kwarteng also touted the achievement of the free Senior High School (SHS) programme.
He says the results of the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) have seen significant with consistent improvement under the free SHS policy.
He added that although the quality of education is not where it is expected to be, the fact remains that the quality is not bad presently.
“When access increases, the general template is that quality decreases, but even though we are not where we have to be, we are not doing badly,” he said during the national dialogue session organized by Media General and STAR-Ghana on Thursday, April 4.
He added, “Data from WASSCE clearly show that there has been consistency and significant improvement.”
Kwasi Kwarteng also mentioned the ‘One Student, One Laptop’ initiative as one of the interventions to improve on quality education.
“We have the ‘One Student One laptop’, we have done quite a significant work,” he said.