Ghana’s Education in reverse Gear as Teachers set end of term exams on blackboards

Ghana’s Education in reverse gear as Teacher mostly in public school set the end of term exams on blackboards. This old fashioned way of writing exams in the 21^st century is uncalled for yet teachers have no option than to write the exams this way. Permit us the tone of this article with all apology.

Government directives to all heads of basic schools dated 25^th January 2019 was that head teachers should not collect any form of monies from parents or pupils in basic schools toward their ward’s education.

The letter further indicated that the levies included PTA dues, termly Examination Printing fees, Mock fees, Extra Classes, and others. The letter further stated that anyone found to have acted contrary to the content of the said letter would be dismissed, demoted or suffers appropriate sanctions.

Monday 1^st April was the day all government schools commenced the 2^nd term examination for the 2018/2029 academic year. Pictures of teachers’ busily writing examination questions on the board have surfaced on social media. This has ridiculed our education, the ministry of education and the minister.

How can we put our education in reverse gear into the past practices that never helped us? The world is moving forward and technology is driving it. If we cannot take advantage of this technology to make work easy for the teacher we have a big problem.  Our Ports have become paperless and our basic school examinations have also become paperless. The countries Ghana continues to benchmark like the UK, USA and the like do not write examinations like this.

Intentions of GES Directive

Government’s intention to make education absolutely free seems to have clouded our thinking, and this policy in particular as a nation and the decision we continue to take regarding our education sector leaves much to be desired. Let us look before we leap.

In one of the pictures circulating on social media, a teacher asked the pupils to “WRITE A LETTER TO THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION EXPLAINING TO HIM TWO NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF ON THE CHALKBOARD”.  This is an excellent question by all standard and we need to all think through it.

Politics has taken the outside of the box ideas out of our very existence as a nation. How can we as a nation, toy with our children and the teachers? So did our teachers go to write the licensing exams to come and write questions on the board? Why didn’t we as a country write the questions the teachers answered in the licensure examination on the black board for them?

Political leaders and policymakers must be ashamed of themselves for this old fashioned decision. Our school children and their dedicated teachers deserve better Mr. Ministry of education and the Ghana Education Service you have to sit up. This decision has surely made you unpopular and you should bow your heads in shame.

If you come out with a policy that, teachers and heads of schools should not charge printing fees, then, you must as a ministry, finance the examination of the children.

Are we going to have our 2019 BECE candidates writing the exams with the questions written on the blackboards? Certainly not. You are going to finance the printing of the exams questions for the public schools while you charge private school children GHS77.00 per head why then do we make the children write the end of term examination this way.

The double standard will not help our education system. Teachers had to squat, kneel down, and climb onto desks just to write questions on the board. School children have to vacate their classroom