Acting Executive Secretary of the National Teaching Council, Dr. Christian Addai-Poku has asserted that students performing exceptionally well in school, be it a public or private one, is not solely dependent on the teacher or the quality of teaching.

Speaking with the host of Happy98.9FM’s host, The Don, during the Happy Development Dialogues, a special edition of the political and social programme, Epahoa Daben which was held at the Ministry of Education, he detailed more on his assertion.

He first noted that even before children are enrolled in school, their family background contributes to 20% of their performance. He made an instance comparing children who have their parents speaking English with them before they are enrolled in school to children who come from another home where their parents do not speak English.

In this case, the child from the first home, who is likely to be enrolled in a private school would already be familiar with the English language and will only have to pick up in school but a child the second home who is also likely to enroll in a public school will now have to learn the language from scratch because he was not made familiar with it from home and this causes the child in the private school to be academically ahead of the child in the public school.

Furthering on his points, he again mentioned that physiological needs of the child can also have an effect on his or her performance in school. “When you go to public schools, since it has been said that education is free, parents take it that they do not need to pay anything at all and this in turn affects the child’s feeding”, he said.

Dr. Addai-Poku continued, “If the child is not lucky and his or her school is not covered by the school feeding programme, then when he eats in the morning before going to school, that means he won’t get to eat again till he goes back home.”

According to the NTC rep, these and many other reasons aside teaching quality are what affect the performance of children in school. He clarified however, that this is not to say that teachers or school authorities have no role to play because child supervision among other things also count.