General News of Tuesday, 25 December 2018

Source: Daniel Kaku

Private schools still hungry for a change - GNACOPS to Government

Members of the Ghana National Council of Private schools Members of the Ghana National Council of Private schools

A selfless leader's desire is for his follower's life and advantages to improve.

For this reason, National Directors of the Ghana National Council of Private schools (GNACOPS) have always interacted with the Education Ministry, requesting for a change for the better, in the private sector of education.

Series of meetings have been held to formulate the best private educational framework that would emphasize standards, equity and promote educational development in private schools.

In line with this, the Directorate of Pre-Tertiary Education in Ghana has been very instrumental in preparing a level ground for achieving the everlasting desire of private schools' demands.

The National Directors of GNACOPS and the Education Ministry agreed on a follow-up meeting after the historic meeting with the President of the republic a few weeks ago at the Jubilee House.

At the follow-up meeting, the Education Minister, Hon. Matthew Opoku Prempeh expressed his views to the council about issues affecting private schools education and called for effective collaboration between the Ministry and private schools.

He further mentioned to the leadership of the council some educational packages and strategies that would help beef up enrolment in private schools, especially at the senior high level.

The Deputy Minister, Hon. Yaw Adutwum, who co-chaired the meeting, elaborated on an intended private-public partnership to steer the affairs of education in Ghana.

He further mentioned other reforms that are about to be introduced into the education system.

These include national assessment of basic education for the classBS2, BS4 and BS6.

This he strongly believes would enhance effective teaching and learning and would also give early performance indications for quick and apt measures to be taken before the child would be assessed finally for certification and merit.

In addition, the Director for PRE-TERTIARY, Madam Catherine Agyepomaa Appiah-Pinkrah called for the need to set up a regulatory body to supervise and implement private education policy that would be used to determine the operations of private schools and urged the council to put in maximum contribution to make her vision a reality in order to eradicate any unapproved educational delivery into the education system in Ghana.

In response to these, National Executives of GNACOPS, led by the National Executive Director, Mr. Enoch Kwesi Gyetuah thanked the leadership of the ministry of education and assured them of the council's readiness to cooperate and contribute to building up a strong collaboration front for the sector's betterment and progress.

He, therefore, asked the sector ministry to rope in private schools into most of the international and local capacity- building programs that are mostly enjoyed by the public schools to help acquaint the private sector with modern trends in education.

In line with this, he requested training support from the National Teaching Council (NTC) to partner with the council to help train over 400,000 untrained private school teachers which the Council, as a private sector initiative has formed into "GNACOPS VOLUNTEERS SERVICE SCHEME (GVSS)" to upgrade these untrained teachers to become professionally trained within four years while they perform their voluntary service in various private schools.

Other matters pertaining to BECE registration were also looked at.

A suggestion was made to the government to pay 50% for private schools in the next academic calendar and this was warmly welcomed.

The meeting ended with a lot of goodwill from both sides for the coming year and the expectation of more collaboration for progress in the sector.