‘Ghana needs consultation on policy formulation’

Dr Christine Amoako-Nuamah, former Presidential Adviser in Mills administration, has called for broad-based consultation in policy formulation especially in the education sector.

She said over the year’s lack of consultation of stakeholders by government on strategy issues had affected the continuity of major policy interventions and programmes to meet the goals and objective in the education sector.

Dr Amoako-Nuamah was speaking at the 2013 Founder’s Week Celebration of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Science (GAAS) in Accra.

Dr Amoako-Nuamah who spoke on the topic: “Rethinking the role of stakeholders in Ghana’s basic education,” charged policy makers, implementing agencies and beneficiaries to begin to explore the collective ownership of future policy changes or re-packaging of existing programmes to meet current and future challenges in the economy .

She called for the adoption of a strong management system, which provides strong and effective supervision as well as monitoring and evaluation in public basic schools.

She said whilst the increased in infrastructure and other government interventions has resulted in an increase enrolment at the basic level, much emphasis has not been placed on policy intervention to increase the human resource strength, thereby lowering the pupil-teacher ratio to an appreciable level.

Dr Amoako-Nuamah said the district assemblies should be required as a policy directive to expand the current experimental sponsorship programme of the training of qualified local candidates to colleges of education.

She said the district assemblies should enact bye-laws to regulate the behaviour of children especially against attendance of social and other extra-curricular activities particularly watching video shows, dance parties and funerals.

Dr Leslie Casely-Hayford, Director of Associate for Change, a Research and Consulting firm who spoke on the topic: “An assessment of the content and quality of basic education in Ghana,” called for strong emphasis on improving educational accountability as well as the importance of improving the quality of teaching and learning.

She noted that a quality education study conducted in the northern Ghana found that basic school outcomes were not adequate for the achievement of quality education in the area.

She said in Ghana head teachers who demonstrate strong leadership are key promoters and facilitators of quality education at school and classroom levels.

Dr Casely-Hayford said the significant challenge for the achievement of higher levels of teacher accountability was that, there was blockade between the teaching force and the institutions responsible for holding the teaching force accountable.

She said for the country to deepen the level of teacher accountability across the education system there was the need for head teacher’s role to be professionalised in order for them to be able to manage the teacher’s attendance, ensure discipline and a minimum standard of teaching and learning at the classroom level.