Member of Parliament for Kwesiminstim, Western region, Hon. Dr Prince Hamid Armah has stated that challenges of the existing educational system are the sector’s lack of credit and qualification framework as a country
Speaking at the Pan Africa Students Conference: Ghana 2022, held at the Pentecost University College, Accra, the legislator who doubles as the Vice Chairman of the Education Committee in Parliament revealed that a national qualification framework will breed transparency and accountability in respect to students’ qualifications.
“The importance of having a national qualification framework is to ensure that there’s transparency and accountability in the qualifications that people possess and how they can transit from one sector of the academic ladder to the other.
“So, for example if you are a TVET or a technical vocation person to transit into the general education, it must be simile for you to do that whether you studied abroad or Nigeria or another Africa country. It must very be easy for you to navigate for one qualification to the other,” he said.
According to him, this has resulted to students being stagnated in terms of your academic choice.
“If you study a first degree, first year at Pentecost University and you want to travel to Nigeria the question will be will you be able to continue from second year from the course you were doing in Ghana …it’s not possible… in fact, in Ghana it was until recently people who had HND and wanted to do degree had to go and start from level 100.
“So, what the qualification does is peace of learning takes place and learning is quantified and converted into a credit or number which can follow you wherever you want to move to,” Dr. Armah noted.
Additionally, he mentioned that the national qualification framework in quest will need a” whole national credit and qualification authority that will be responsible for credit transfer.”
“Well-structured countries that have qualification systems also have qualification authorities and so one of the key policy changes that we will require is to decouple the qualification evaluation, certificate evaluation and create a whole national credit and qualification authority that will be responsible for credit transfer, because it’s a huge business on its own, that cannot be left under a unit of an agency.”
He therefore recommended that West Africa Examination Council, the Ghana chapter be converted into the Ghana National Credit Examination Authority responsible for credit and qualifications for the pre tertiary level.
Speaking on mobility challenges facing international students in the country he said the continent’s policy space is not conducive to foster student mobility.
“Student in Africa are struggling in terms of mobility not only on immigration issues, but because policy imperative of credit transfer, policy imperative of qualification evaluation. So, every country is working in silos.”
“The impact of student mobility is so much that it can even have impact on our economic development. In terms of resources, when people study outside and they decide to stay there the knowledge they acquire are kept there. But if we are able to do that then people see the flexibility of crisscrossing across Africa country,” he added.
He therefore urged policy makers across Africa to conceptualize these mobility problems as an Africa problem and create solutions, which will aid the eradication of the problem.
The conference dubbed Bridging the educational engagement gap: Immigration and inter-cultural dialogue had global dignitaries such as Deputy head of mission, Embassy of Algeria, Atmane Boudjemia, Ambassador for Suriname, H.E Fidelia Graand-Galdon, and Director Community Education and Youth Development, Dr. Akosua Abdallah gracing the event.
