‘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.