Lecturer 'exposes' NDC on quota admissions to nursing, teacher training colleges

A lecturer and a one-time holder of the Most Outstanding College Teacher Award, Dr. Simon Boateng has described as false, assertions that teacher and nursing training colleges were ordered to restrict admissions to a quota after President Akufo-Addo's administration restored allowances for teacher and nursing trainees.

The former President John Mahama who has copiously made the claim has indicated as part of his manifesto promises, to scrap the quota system and allow the institutions to admit at their maximum capacities.

Speaking to host Julius Caesar Anadem on the Ultimate Breakfast Show, Dr. Boateng who also served as Quality Assurance Officer with additional responsibilities for admissions at the St Monica’s College of Education clarified that admissions had rather increased over the period of the resumption of allowances.

He pointed out that the quota system was a long-held institutional imperative executed on orders of the successive governments in tandem with the responsibility of the state, to employ the bonded students after graduation.

He insisted, “I have taught in the training college before coming to the university and I hold the record of Ghana’s most outstanding college teacher as of last year. As a quality assurance officer, I have been an integral part of colleges of education admission and I felt a responsibility to join the NPP’s communications team to correct this.”

Dr. Boateng explained, “Since Kwame Nkrumah’s time, the government has been obliged to post them and so over the years colleges of education have not had the power to admit any number of students they want as happens in the universities. The government places a quota because immediately they graduate, they should be posted,”

“At the time President Mahama took away the allowances, I was teaching at ST Monica’s College of Education. It was admitting a 157 quota. When NPP came and instituted the allowances, we were admitting 510, an incremental jump,” he stressed.

He contended that the quota system was neither a creation of President Akufo-Addo’s administration nor the choice of any presidential candidate to promise to scrap it, insisting that it was a policy imperative.