3-YEAR SHS: MATTERS ARISING

Wednesday August 05, 2009

Government has decided: second cycle education will last three years, instead of four.

The Minister of Education who announced this on Monday, told the Times that the decision followed the acceptance by the government of recommendations of the National Educational Forum held in May this year.

The Ghanaian Times was not surprised by the decision, seeing as the three-year duration had been government position from the very start.

Not only were we not surprised; we were actually disappointed, seeing as there had been very good arguments in favour of the four-year duration.

One of such arguments was a concern that as a country, our educational policy seemed to favour the “chew, pour for examinations and forget”.

Under this policy, the duration of the course does not matter; for all that anybody cares, the child might as well spend one year in school, if only for the purpose of preparing him or her for examinations.

The four-year duration, in the opinion of the Times, would ensure that children from JHS use the first year in SHS to familiarize themselves with all the subjects – it used to be three whole years in the past – before choosing which of them would benefit their future configurations.

This, we think, is preferable to the current system where the child plunges directly into subject choices even before he or she sits in class.

There are whole new areas such as Geography, Economics, Government etc with which they are not familiar, but which are presented to them to make a choice.

Four years gives the child an opportunity to look at some of these specifics in relation to their future careers and professions.

The three-year system does not allow that.

We have noted the government’s concerns in relation to lack of facilities such as classrooms, workshops and laboratories.

These are genuine concerns, but we think that the argument in favour of a four-year system that allows the children a whole year to familiarize themselves with new subjects to be able to make up their minds, outweighs any other consideration.

Now that the final decision has been announced, there are one or two areas that could possibly present challenges.

One of them is the decision to allow the students currently in SHS One to go through the four-year duration.

We can foresee a problem at the level of admissions into the universities in year 2011.

Unless the government directs that one batch (those starting the three-year duration with effect from next academic year) stands down in favour of the four-year students, the number of students seeking admission into the universities in 2011will double.

If the decision is taken to let one stream stand down in favour of the other, there is likely to be a domino effect – where every year, students pass out of SHS and would have to wait a whole year to apply to enter the universities.

The Times prays that something can be done about this problem.

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