The Editor of the Daily Dispatch newspaper, Ben Ephson has compared the handling of the country’s educational system by the Kufuor administration and the Mills administration to the game of ‘chaskele’ [a game similar to the game of cricket].
According to Mr. Ephson, the two main parties, the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party are both playing politics with the number of years students have to spend in school instead of working towards improving the quality of education in the country.
Speaking on Multi TV’s political talk show, Joint Caucus, Mr. Ephson said “I think that they two main parties are playing ‘chaskele’ with education because I don’t think is the number of years one spends in school. But the quality of the teachers, the quality of work, these are the two most important factors.”
He noted that although the NDC appears to be on track with its manifesto promise for the education sector, increasing Capitation Grant and improving on the School Feeding Program alone is not enough.
“If you’re going to spend three or four years and you have 80 students in a class, which teacher is going to give essays? You’ll do question and answer [objective] then when you finish they ask you to mark it.”
He noted that when political parties are out of power, they make several promises to be fulfilled when they come into office. “So I think that they should stop playing ‘chaskele’ and virtually try and improve on the quality and have more teachers, less children so that there can be qualitative education.”
“In the earlier years, the strength of the education we had was not objective questions, teachers marking even your handwriting, so I think that with ICT it should be very easy.
"If you travel out to the rural areas to do research and you see the quality of education there, and [yet] they all take the same exams. I think that the two parties must be focused on the issue of quality and stop playing politics with the number of years” he added.
