30% Of Poor Students To Be Admitted Into Best SHS - NAPO Reveals

Education Minister, Matthew Opoku Prempeh has disclosed that as part of government's commitment to enhance Ghana's education system, 30 percent of poor people will be admitted into best schools in the country.

According to him, this is to bridge the gap between the privileged and underprivileged in the education sector.

Speaking in an exclusive interview on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo", Hon. Opoku Prempeh, affectionately called Napo, said the government has implemented its free SHS policy to absorb every student in the country.

Therefore, one of his top priorities of ensuring that the free SHS policy becomes beneficial, is to have these 30% poor people enrolled in the 52 best acclaimed schools across the country.

The 52 schools considered to be our best schools, whether they like it or not, 30% of your admission will go to poor people. Those who from a difficult background had 26, 24.....If you claim you’re a good school, get them better”, he stated.

He also told host Kwami Sefa Kayi that, his outfit will ensure that women receive the best of education to bridge the gender balance gap for the simple reason being that "when women become successful, the country will be successful. So, nobody should sit somewhere and think the only benefit of women to society, is to marry them off....No successful woman will allow her child to live a wayward lifestyle, but there are several successful men who don’t even take care of their children. So, I want women to be great in Ghana”.

He further stated that the government has realized that one of the biggest challenges facing the education sector is the lack of teacher empowerment.

He revealed that under the erstwhile Mahama administration, no graduate teacher was employed, while only Teachers with Diploma Certificates always had automatic appointments, a situation he described as wrong and unacceptable.

To remedy the situation, he noted that all teachers must be given a basic education qualification so that the country employs as much of teachers as it can. 

He further revealed that as part of the NPP administration’s programme of empowering the teacher to give off his or her best, the government will soon upgrade all Colleges of Education into Degree awarding Universities.

In the last 5 years, between 2012 and 2016 - that four-year period – till we came in 2017, no graduate had been employed…I think it is wrong. We should let all teachers have some basic education, qualification which is the degree and employ as much as we can employ.....Currently when a student does a Diploma Course he or she spends 3 years and does a top up course of 2 years spending 5 years to become a full degree teacher. But government says no, it will upgrade Colleges of Education to Universities Colleges of Education to ensure that all the Colleges are attached directly to the University as University Colleges. You’ll start and end with a degree within 4 years," he stated.