Ho, Nov. 5, GNA - The Ministry of Education is to consult with heads of tertiary institutions on how to "stagger'' the admission of Senior High School (SHS) graduates between 2012 and 2014. The Education Minister, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, was explaining to the Ghana News Agency how the Ministry intended to address the challenges of tertiary admissions following the return to the three-year SHS programme effective September 2010.

He told the opening session of the 47th annual Conference of the Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) in Ho Wednesday that the Ministry would also "accelerate the establishment of the Open University System to ease out some of the pressures on the tertiary institutions.

Mr Tettey-Enyo said SHS final year examinations would not be conducted in 2010 and that "in 2013 a double cohort may challenge the system". "The Ministry of Education plans to adjust the length of the fourth (4th) year to ensure that in every academic year there will be a batch of students undertaking examinations," he said.

".we would need your support all the way to ensure the success of the proposed changes," Mr Tettey-Enyo said. The conference theme is "Senior High school Education in Ghana: The challenges and the way forward". He assured CHASS of government commitment to providing the financial resources, infrastructure, materials, training, logistics and incentives to ease the additional burden.

Mr Tettey-Enyo urged members of CHASS to assist government in making their schools centres of excellence by posting excellent academic results and ensuring attractive environments.

Speaking on the theme of the Conference, Dr George Mawusi Afeti, Secretary General of the Commonwealth Association of Polytechnics in Africa (CAPA), said the obsession with examinations constituted one of the constraints to achieving the global objectives of SHS education. "The tyranny of examinations is so pervasive within our education system to the extent that all teaching and learning is geared towards passing examinations rather than building a learning society," he said. He said the debate about the duration of the SHS would be misplaced if it SHS system is seen "only as a clearing house for entering the university rather than as contributing to the creation of a learning society, thinking society and a knowledge society".

Dr Afeti suggested the institution of "an appropriate incentive scheme that rewards schools for achieving quality improvement benchmarks set by the Ghana Education Service as means of enhancing the quality of SHS education". He said such a quality improvement reward scheme could consist of the best performing school in science and mathematics, the best performing girls SHS, the best performing community SHS and the most improved SHS, based on two successive final year results. "Such a reward scheme," he said "may have greater impact on education quality than the Best Teacher Awards which as currently designed recognize individual achievement but not the collective effort and contribution of school heads and teachers to improving overall academic quality at the institutional level."