The presidential candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, says he will, in the first 100 days of his administration, review the free senior school policy.
Speaking to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Accra on Tuesday, November 7, Mr. Mahama emphasised the need for a stakeholder summit that would involve educationists, teachers, parents, students, and opinion leaders.
The summit would aim to enhance the Free SHS system and elevate the quality of basic education. He also outlined his intention to assemble a panel of educational experts to formulate an improved framework for implementing the policy.
“Within the first 100 days in government, we will convene a stakeholder summit that brings together educationists, experts, teachers, parents, students and opinion leaders to deliberate on how to improve the implementation of the Free SHS system and also improve the quality of our basic education,” Mr Mahama said.
Mr. Mahama proposed returning student assessments to the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) for regional blocs, arguing that relying solely on Ghana-administered local exams may not accurately assess student performance compared to English-speaking countries.
“We will return Ghana to the regional exams conducted by the West African Examinations Council so that it will be possible to compare the performance of our children with our English-speaking neighbours in the sub-region”.
“Right now, we write a local Ghana exam, we mark it ourselves, we mark our own scripts and we give ourselves high marks… If you don’t have any benchmark to compare, how can you tell you are improving?”
By: Rashid Obodai Provencal/Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
