Former President John Dramani Mahama has instructed Education Minister Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum to delegate authority to someone else if he cannot help pupils in low-performing schools improve.
The Minister’s announcement that all underperforming schools will be closed if they do not improve, according to the NDC flagbearer candidate, is unacceptable and indicates his ineptitude.
Addressing NDC supporters in the Ahafo Ano South-East Constituency as part of a three-day campaign tour of the Ashanti Region, Mr. Mahama urged Dr. Adutwum to “stop assigning blame and accept responsibility for the underperforming schools and address the issue head-on.”
He believes it is the Minister’s obligation to guarantee that all schools have the resources they need to enhance their academic results.
“The suggestion by the Education Minister to close down non-performing schools and enroll the students in other schools is unacceptable and insensitive to me, it’s not really understandable,” he said.
He further stated that, under the direction of Prof. Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang, many of the low-performing schools were brought up to a level where they could compete with the best-performing institutions.
However, he observed that academic quality in many of these low-rated institutions has decreased substantially owing to carelessness since the NPP administration assumed power.
“It’s not the fault of the schools, their bad performance; it’s your responsibility as Education Minister to resource all underprivileged schools adequately, so you can’t close any school in Ghana,” he said.
During a meeting in Kumasi, the Education Minister tasked the Conference of Heads of Aided Secondary Schools (CHASS) and Principals of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions with improving their educational achievements or risking the closure of their schools.
He encouraged schools with a continuous zero to ten percent pass rate to develop solutions to ensure that the majority of their pupils are able to continue their education rather than becoming a liability to their parents and society.