GIMPA CENTRE FOR IMPACT INVESTING STAKEHOLDER MEETING

 GIMPA CENTRE FOR IMPACT INVESTING STAKEHOLDER MEETING AT THE GOLDEN TULIP HOTEL, KUMASI. OUR VICE CHAIRMAN, MR JOSEPH DONKOR WAS A PARTICIPANT.

TENDER

TENDER: Bidding for the GNAPS WEEK SOUVENIR contract is now open. Interested people could pick form at the Regional Secretariat, at a non-refundable fee of GH200.00 on 20th Oct. 2014. Submission of tender is on 25th Oct. 2014. In case of clarification call 0244528492/0268399665. Thanks

ICT Seminar

You are invited to attend ICT Seminar on Monday, 20th Oct, 2014 at Kumasi Polytechnic-Great Hall. Speackers: Micheal Mino-USA, Mrs. Habiba Nyarko Agyemang, Administrator, Otumfuo Foundation. You are required to bring 1 ICT Tutor and two students for a fee of GH50.00. Course materials will be provided. Call 0542907476/0576518828 for further infor.

Chief calls for immediate measures to improve education at GNAPS 2014 Conference in Tamale- Source-GNA

Naa Ambassador Yakubu Abdulai, Chief of Sagnerigu, a suburb of Tamale, has appealed to major stakeholders in education to urgently develop national curricula that would promote quality education directly linked to the job market.

He stated that the country has not been able to harness ideas that would practically create job opportunities for the youth, and stressed the need for the relevant authorities to develop programmes that would solve the problems.

Naa Ambassador Abdulai made the appeal at the 24th Annual General Conference of the Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) at Tamale.

The conference is on the theme: “Quality or Quantity Education, which way for Ghana?”

Members of GNAPS from all over the country, or their representatives, met for the two-day conference , to discuss the contribution made by private schools to education and its improvement.

Naa Ambassador Abdulai called on educational institutions to create more room for job training in their schools towards addressing the national problem of unemployment.

He advised policy makers and managers of the country’s public schools to learn best practices from the most successful private schools and achievers of quality education.

The public education sector, he said, should also strengthen supervision and monitoring in schools to ensure that learners derive the optimum benefits from education.

Mr Steve Revss, National President of the GNAPS, urged the Ministry of Education to give children in private schools equal access to government logistics and inputs just as those in the public schools.

He also urged politicians to stop manipulating issues of education saying, “Issues of education should be left with the education authorities to take the necessary decisions to improve education in the country”.

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/regional/artikel.php?ID=321863

GNAPS 2014 GENERAL CONFERENCE-TAMALE

REGIONAL GNAPS CALLING!

Members are being reminded that there will be a meeting at Cultural Centre, Quarshie Idun Hall, 31th July 2014 at 10:00 am. MAIN AGENDA: REGIONAL ELECTION. Check and pay your indebtedness at the Regional Secretariat before you qualify to vote today. Thank you.

Short code announced to correct mistakes in BECE placements

The National Coordinator of the Computerized School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS), George Atta Boateng has announced a short with which that Basic Education Certification Examination (BECE) candidates can access, to check and make corrections to their selected schools before placements are done in September.

He said all candidates should text their Index numbers to the short code 1060 across networks.

The introduction of the short code he said, is to “enable candidates make corrections and amendments to the four preferred schools selected at the time of registration for the examination and other details relating to their placement”.

A total of 422,946 Junior High School (JHS) students sat for this year’s BECE.

They comprise 223,765 males and 199,181 females. The candidates, who are from 12,562 public and private schools, wrote the examination at 1,437 centers across the country.

The CSSPS is used by the Ghana Education Service (GES) to improve the manual system of selection and placement of qualified BECE candidates into Senior High School (SHS)/ Technical Institutions (TI) and Vocational Institutions.

Operation of the CSSPS is carried out by a Secretariat which is under the Secondary Education Division (SED) of the GES.

Since the CSSPS became operational in 2005, it has encountered many challenges.

Parents have complained of their wards not being fairly placed as some say female students were sent to boys schools and vice versa.

Others also complained about their wards not getting their selected choice of schools as well as their preferred course choices.

However the National Coordinator of the programme says the short code has been introduced in order to avoid all these mishaps which were previously experienced and the strain it put on both parents and candidates.

He further stated, candidates should report any mistakes which may occur to their various JHS, Regional and or District Education offices for corrections to be made before September 2014.

2014 GNAPS GENERAL CONFERENCE

VENUE:   University Of Development Studies –  Central Administration –                                     Dungu -  Tamale 

THEME: “Quality or Quantity Education, which way, Ghana?”

DATE:      11^th – 14^th August, 2014

Costs:

1.   Conference  Costs               …………. GH¢68.00

2.   Feeding                               …………. GH¢84.00

TOTAL                                               GH¢152.00   

ACCOMODATION:

a.    4 per room  ……………………. GH¢21.00 for 3 days

b.   2 per room  ……………………. GH¢42.00 for 3 days

c.    1 per room  ……………………. GH¢84.00 for 3 days

GENERAL COST WITH ACCOMODATION OPTIONS:

a.    4 per room     ……………  GH¢152 + GH¢21.00  ……..  GH¢173.00

b.   2 per room     ……………  GH¢152 + GH¢42.00  ……..  GH¢194.00

c.    1 per room     ……………  GH¢152 + GH¢84.00  ……    GH¢236.00

NB: Reservations for facilities are to be made before June 30^th, 2014

b. All participants are to carry their own bedspreads and pillow cases.

c. Participants should make commitments through their Regional Chairpersons

‘Investigate school placement system’

The Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) has called on President John Mahama to order investigations into the abuse of the Computerised School, Selection and Placement System (CSSPS).

The association alleged that the admission placement processes were plagued with serious malpractices and, therefore, parents were losing confidence in the CSSPS.

“There is  clear evidence that the placement exercise has all these years been done haphazardly by officers who are not committed to their responsibilities,”  GNAPS alleged further.

At a press briefing in Accra yesterday, the President of GNAPS, Mr Godwin Sowah, who spoke on behalf of the association, accused personnel in charge of the admission placement processes of abusing the trust and confidence reposed in them by the public, adding that their conduct confirmed allegations that the CSSPS centre was plagued with serious malpractices.

The event also marked the launch of the GNAPS Week celebration for 2014, which has the theme: “Quality for quantity education—which way, Ghana?”.

Wholesale admission

Mr Sowah also alleged that since the inception of the CSSPS, the GES had been promoting what it called ‘the wholesale admission’ of BECE candidates into public senior high, technical and vocational schools.

According to him, currently, many children in basic schools could neither read nor write, yet they would be made to write the BECE, indicating that some would be placed in second-cycle institutions. 

‘It is either our mechanisms that need serious reforms or the human factor is woefully incompetent or we need a retraining of personnel at all levels,” Mr Sowah added. 

Leave education to professionals 

Mr Sowah called on the public to rise against the manipulation of the educational system by politicians.

“Constituencies and communities should turn their backs on the use of educational promises as a bait to catch votes”,  he advised.

He also said frequent policy changes and non-commitment in following laid-down rules and regulations, among other factors, ‘had contributed to this poor state of affairs.’

Mr Godwin Sowah (right), the President of the Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS), briefing the media in Accra. Picture: Samuel Adjei-Boateng.

Written by  Nana Konadu Agyeman / Daily Graphic / Ghana | Wednesday, 19 February 2014 06:19 

Private schools kick against wholesale admission of BECE candidates into SHS

The Central Regional branch of the Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS), has expressed grave concern about the wholesale admission of BECE candidates into Senior High School by the Ghana Education Service.

According to the Association, the move was seriously hampering the efforts being made by the private schools to improve quality education the country was yearning for.

Mr. Eric Appiah, Central Regional Chairman of the Association made this known during the week-long celebration of private schools at Agona Swedru.

The chairman regretted that universities and polytechnics had also become dumping grounds of these candidates due to their poor performance at the SHS.

The celebration had ”Quality or Quantity Education: Which Way Ghana?”.

He said the ”effect of wholesale promotion, that is, promotion not based on merit, would result in rolling on poor materials through the educational system, and at end of the chain, turn out bad products.

He urged politicians to leave matters on education to the professionals, and urged the various communities and constituencies to turn their backs to the use of education as promise by politicians to buy their votes.

The Regional |Chairman asked politicians not to use education as an infrastructure to do politics, since that could jeopardize the future of Ghanaian children.

He called for a national educational policy that would not be changed by any future government to promote quality education.

Mr Justice Kojo Yankson, Agona West Municipal Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Private Schools, appealed to parents to pay their wards’ school fees regularly to promote effective teaching and learning.

He expressed deep appreciation to the Agona West Municipal Chief Executive(MCE), Mr Samuel Oppong, for supplying furniture to private schools within the Municipality.

Mr Orlerty Wusah, Agona West Chairman of GNAPS said the success of quality education coupled with better examination results chalked by private schools depended on supervision.

2014 GNAPS WEEK CELEBRATION

VICE CHAIRMAN- ASHANTI REGION MR. JOSEPH DONKOR DELIVERING HIS SPEECH

2014 GNAPS CELEBRATION IN PICTURES