The Convention People’s Party has been making alternative suggestions on how government could solve some of the numerous problems facing Ghana’s educational sector.
At a retreat in Cape Coast, the CPP presented its administrative agenda in the areas of Education, Agriculture, Finance and Economy, Women and Children and other sectors.
On education, the party’s presidential candidate in the 2008 elections, Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, has indicated the CPP will institutionalize a compulsory education programme for every child, from kindergarten through to the senior high level.
He said the CPP would also abolish the Basic Education Certificate Examinations, BECE. According to Dr. Nduom, “about 60 percent of our children who take the BECE exams do not move on to the senior secondary school level. Most of these people fall by the way side.”
He said the present sophisticated economy that Ghana has requires that quality education is provided to properly train the country’s human resource for all functioning sectors.
“Our plan is to…have more schools built, to have more teachers trained [and] more facilities put in place. So we are thinking ahead to ensure that in the near future we are able to have children from kindergarten through to senior secondary school…without interruptions. If we are going to do that then the BECE has no place in all of this.”
As part of the CPP’s strategy, Dr. Nduom said every year students should be made to write an exams before moving to the next stage and then those who are unable to pass are made to repeat the class.
“For CPP, it is simple because after independence the CPP met a similar problem where there were very few schools…so it started an accelerated educational programme. That is how come many schools have been celebrating 50 years of being in existence [lately],” he indicated. He said the CPP has carried out such policies with foresight and will plan ahead of time to execute such a project.