'Implementation of Ghana Partnership Schools Project, GES must come again' - Rev. Seth Danquah

Rev Seth Ameyaw Danquah, Managing Editor of the Young Advocate, a leading children’s newspaper in the Western and Central Regions has called on the government to provide all the required logistics for quality public education and the needs of staff to elevate to the desired level of public education.

He further called on the government to stop the over-politicization of education and allow parents and stakeholders who wish to support the unit the opportunity to do so adding, “the government must provide a steady, concise and precise syllabus and if possible revert all the mission schools to the missions for proper management and supervision hitherto was effective”.

According to him, statistics clearly show that with the population growth there is no way government alone can provide education to its citizenry and that education of the citizenry is a national goal, as well as a priority and necessity hence, must be seen as a serious business.

Rev Danquah made the call in a press statement issued on the implementation of Ghana Partnership Schools (GPS) Project to add his voice to the concerns of the various teacher unions on the policy.

He noted that the challenges of our public schools go beyond privatization, commercialization and commoditization as it is purported in that the unit is bedeviled with a myriad of challenges.

Predominantly among the challenges he mentioned are lack of chalk, lack of textbooks, no capitation grant and collection of special levies, and no extra classes. The rest are lack of proper internal and external supervision, lack of commitment on the part of government and teachers, over politicization of education especially in the unit, no proper corporate governance practice, lack of workshops and labs for technical, ICT and science education and the lack of learning-friendly environment.

Rev Danquah who is also a business and leadership coach opined that promotions should be based on qualification and competence instead of long service as a proper corporate governance practice. “For instance, there are instances where some public schools have diploma or first-degree holders as headteachers when there are teachers with first degrees or Masters”.

He added that supervisors and headteachers must be trained to have leadership and managerial skills to function effectively and efficiently in their work and not just become positional leaders.

In September this year, the government through the Ministry of Education (MoE) and its regulator, Ghana Education Service (GES) will implement the Ghana Partnership Schools (GPS) Project. The MoE and the GES were collaborating with ARK, an international consortium to implement the project.

Under this project, a total of 100 selected public schools in the Ashanti, Northern, Central and Greater Accra regions would be handed over to private school operators to manage. The project is purported to run for three years after which it may be institutionalized permanently.