Ensuring reliable data on private schools...GES, GNAPS TO UNDERTAKE CENSUS (PAGE 11)

THE Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) have initiated moves to carry out a national census of private schools in the country.
This is to enable the government and other educational agencies to have concise and reliable data on private schools.
Another area that would be looked at is the decentralisation of the Private Schools unit and the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS).
The President of GNAPS, Mr Godwin Sowah, made this known at a meeting of the Conference of Heads of Private Schools (CHOPS) in Accra.
He disclosed that the GES had embarked on reorganisation and restructuring of the Private Schools Unit at its headquarters so the unit was being upgraded into a division to enable it have the needed personnel and logistics to carry out its duties very effectively.
“The GES headquarters is working in close consultation with GNAPS and it’s hoped that within the shortest possible time and before the next academic year starts in September 2009, Ghanaians would have an educational structure and system to boast of especially in the private sector,” he said.
For some time now, Mr Sowah said, a section of the public had been critical of the GES for dragging its feet in the bid to find solutions to key problems in the private sector of the educational system.
He indicated that the registration and licensing of schools had never been properly done and that had led to the mushrooming of all manner of schools from crèche through senior high school to diploma awarding institutions.
Mr Sowah said some people had established schools without following GES rules and regulations, and that a “number of public senior high schools and teachers, especially in the regional capitals have established their own private senior high schools and are using GES buildings and facilities”.
“Parents are made to believe that their wards are being admitted into the mainstream of the school, but for various reasons had to come to school in the afternoon,” he said.
He said although there had been a long-standing GES directive against such practice, the GES itself had never pursued the matter and had allowed monetary gains to becloud the minds of some heads of schools.
Mr Sowah said the get-rich-quick syndrome had taken precedence over professional commitment and that the energies of teachers, time for preparation, marking of exercices, and examinations as well as school resources were abused.
“This is one of the reasons why standards are falling and cheating in examination is on the ascendancy. It is the hope of well-meaning Ghanaians that with a new government and a dedicated minister, the GES would have the courage to stop the practice immediately,” he said.