Prempeh College Is Producing More Scientist ....

...And Technologist Students For Ghana

Quite recently 8, 594 students offered admission at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) were matriculated into the university. The Vice-Chancellor Professor Kwesi Andam in his matriculation address furnished us with the list of top 25 schools which had their students admitted in to the university.

When you go through the list of the top 25 science and technology schools then you try to call the 2004 SSSCE League Table provided by the Ministry of Education and Sports as unscientific. This is the not the first time I am talking about this. I remember early part of the year when the table came out our organization issued a press statement calling for the withdrawal of the league table as it was flawed with inadequacies.

This was so because the Ministry of Education and Sports was only interested in the quantity of students were passing whether with grade E or D without looking at the quality of the passes.

The idea of the Ministry of Education to stick to a quantitative approach in ranking schools in the country is something that leaves much to be desired. Everywhere we go we talk about quality of the students passing out and not the quantity of student passing out. Today the emphasis is on quality and not on quantity. This is why the Presidential Commission on Ghana?s Education recommended that the wholesale promotion of pupils and students be discontinued. Since a mere pass cannot lead students to get admission into higher level of education, it must be emphasized that yardstick for ranking schools based only passed grades has to be revised. A student may have all the passes but those passes cannot lead him to gain admission into the universities, polytechnics, teacher training colleges and so on. Are all passes equal? Certainly not! If a student obtains grade E in core mathematics by convention is deemed to have passed. Like wise another student who also gets grade A in the same mathematics has also passed. For us to be able to make a scientific assessment of these students we will have to go beyond the fact that they have passed but rather move to a qualitative assessment of their passes. And when this done we will know that the one who had grade A did far better than the one with grade E. It is likened to two countries going for war and each country has one hundred soldiers. At end of the war ten soldiers die from the war and the remaining ninety come back. The other nation also returns with all their combatants home with nearly sixty of them having their legs and arms amputated and some maimed. Which of these two countries will be deemed to have a stronger army? A qualitative assessment of the two will tell you that the former is better than the latter.

There are some schools which according the league table were placed higher than the traditional good schools yet according the KNUST statistics none of them were found in the top schools. This is not to say that the KNUST is the only university in the country nor the only post secondary or tertiary school in the country or science is the only programme offered at the SSSCE. Of course after SSSCE you can either go to university, polytechnic, teacher training, nursing training etc. However, we are told that the KNUST admits the cream of Ghana?s secondary school leavers, so to some extent I can make some assumption and proceed on (with all respect to all other institutions). One which is certainly clear is that in this country those who pass with good grades will like to go the universities. This is a truth which we cannot deny it!!!!!!!!

For the purpose of this feature let us take a glance of the league table and the top 10 schools which had their students admitted to KNUST.

KNUST RANKING	SCHOOL	NUMBER ADMITTED AT KNUST	POSITION ON THE LEAGUE TABLE	TOTAL NUMBER OF STUDENTS WHO PASSED IN 8 SUBJECTS
1st	PREMPEH COLLEGE	441	15th	709
2nd	PRESEC, LEGON	321	26th	532
3rd	MFANTISPIM SCHOOL	306	13th	438
4th	OPOKU WARE SCHOOL	250	8th	458
5th	WESLEY GIRLS SCHOOL	211	1st	374
6th	ACHIMOTA SCHOOL	181	23	206
7th	YAA ASANTEWAA SCHOOL	176	6th	404
8th	ST. AUGUSTINE?S COLLEGE	162	31	342
9th	ST LOUIS SEC. SCHOOL	161	9th	186
10th	ADISADEL COLLEGE	148	21st	415

This list go on in this order: Pope Johns Secondary School, Kumasi High School, St Peters Secondary School, Ghana Secondary Technical School, Kumasi Anglican Secondary School, Aburi Girls? Secondary School, St Roses Secondary, T.I Ahmadeyia School-Kumasi, St Monicas Secondary School and Holy Child Secondary School.

When you look at this list you ask your self where are the schools like Notre Dame Seminary(1st) position on the 2004 SSSCE League Table), Sefwi Bekwai Secondary School (1st), Kukuom Agric Secondary School (1st), Diaso Secondary School (1st) and Mozano Secondary Technical School (11th) The KNUST statistics alone cannot be used to make a firm statement unless all other tertiary schools (universities, teacher training colleges, polytechnics, nursing schools and others rest) at the end of their 2005/06 admissions provide us with the list such data then we can know which school best in the country. This will help us know which schools and regions are underrepresented in our tertiary institutions. Let us have national database of such statistics. This will help educational authorities to develop especially for special programmes and even help students to make good selection.

THE WAY FORWARD

To use only a quantitative measure is lacking and unscientific. It is important that we scrape the present criteria and come out with a league table that is more comprehensive, reliable and valid. To this end we need to attach values to grades obtained by candidates. During the time students were writing university entrance examinations by the universities in Ghana grades obtained by students were quantified with numerical values attached to them. If a candidate gets grade A he/she was allocated with 50 point, B was 40, C was 30, D was 20 and E was allotted 10 points in that order. So such approach can be incorporated and adopted today to rank schools. Since this will actually take into consideration grades scored by each student and give us the qualitative measure of each school?s performance and not a superficial quantitative measure.

Appiah Kusi Adomako is an educationist, freelance writer and the president of the Ghana Chapter of Leaders of Tomorrow Foundation. He can be contacted through:
Leaders of Tomorrow Foundation,
P.O. BOX. KS 13640.
Kumasi.
Tel 027-740-2467 Email: appiahkusiy2k@yahoo.com . www.interconection.org/lotfound