Making education a priority in Ghana....when?

Education undoubtedly is key to Africa's problems. If third world nations like Ghana are truly willing to see themselves out of poverty in years to come, they would need to pay more attention to the challenges faced in its education sector.

This half of the year in particular, Ghana has been faced with a list of challenges as far as its education is concerned;

1. University and Polytechnic lecturers were compelled to go on strike (after so many formal attempts) as a way of pushing for better conditions of service.
2. Parents of first year senior high students were asked to pay extra for accommodation because there weren't enough furniture for boarding and lodging purposes. The unfortunate ones now have to travel miles from home to school.
3. The one laptop per child initiative had to be called off because of lack of electricity in certain areas.
4. There still is a good number of schools in Ghana that teach pupils under trees.
5. Students loans are yet to be disbursed by the students' loan trust.

With these problems staring at us in the face, we still spend money on other areas that will help the country in no way. As a country we have a duty to provide the best education to our future leaders if we do see education as a priority.

Education: A view from Ghana - the Ashesi and MEST example

This era requires nothing less than hands-on education and tuition. Anything short of that will obviously make the beneficiaries of such a system not only unemployed, but also unemployable. In Ghana, the main public Universities produce many graduates every year. According to the Minister of Employment and Social Welfare, a big fraction out of this number are unemployable. My objective in this post is to evaluate the underlying factors that cause this dilemma and whether a solution can be found anytime soon.

Our public Universities are under-resourced and yet over populated. Lecturer to student ratios are amazingly unbelievable, yet at the end of the day, the graduates are expected to compete with their counterparts globally. I personally believe it is about time, the private sector came to the government's rescue.

Two main organisations that come to mind are the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) and Ashesi University. These schools have devoted their resources to train the Ghanaian population, one at a time. Ashesi University was founded by Patrick Awuah, former Microsoft executive. Every year the University produces talents in the liberal arts, sciences and engineering.

MEST on the other hand, was a dream conceived by Jorn Lyseggen, the CEO of the Meltwater Group, to train and prepare Ghanaian graduates in the technology and software fields. The trainees after graduation are supported by the Meltwater Foundation to start their own businesses to compete with similar Internet companies on the global market. The talents and skills exhibited by these trainees will undoubtedly go a long way to create wealth and employment for Ghana.

I believe, more of such strategies have to be considered if Ghana would want to compete with other advanced nations.

Education: A view from Ghana

Africa is a continent with very little respect for education. It is estimated that at every point in time only about 6 percent of the people living on this continent have a post-high school certification of some sort. What bothers my mind the most is the attitude of the powers that be towards such matters of serious concern. They treat issues relating to education with a pinch of salt. In Ghana for instance the very pillars built to serve as public universities are the same which stand even today.

The biggest problem facing Africa undoubtedly is education. This I guess is not a matter of opinion but of fact. All other problems that face us and seem to be bigger than education can be resolved as soon as the primary problem of education is nipped in the bud.

I would like to draw your mind to a silent killing phenomenon which seems to be Ghana's dilemma although we hardly pay attention to it. I am talking about a cycle which always ensures that the best of students enter into University and the next level of students enter polytechnic.The third level of students find themselves in training colleges either as teacher trainees or as nurse trainees.

If we took the time to closely evaluate the calibre of entrants into the training colleges,we would realise that most (not all) of these students could not obtain high grades in English and Maths. These are the very people who will one day come out of such institutions to teach our kids English or Mathematics. My question is Why open up teacher training institutions for them, just because they did not obtain the necessary qualifications for into the University or Polytechnics ? I believe the willingness to teach should be a matter of choice and interest and nothing else.

I am looking forward to seeing a day when the best of students from our high schools would love to go into teacher training colleges to become tomorrow's teachers for our kids to benefit from their knowledge.

Next time you go into a government hospital and you do not get the best of treatment from the nurses..............think again probably she is not there because of interest rather she was pushed into nursing.