The Deputy Minister of Education Mahama Ayariga is about to embark on a nation-wide tour to ascertain the real cause of the mass failure by this year’s WASCE candidates. This year’s results, we are told, is the worst in 13 years. About half of the candidates who sat for the exams could not make the grades that will see them progress to the various tertiary institutions. In mathematics, almost one-quarter (25%) of the candidates had f’s.

In an attempt to tackle the problem the Deputy Minister will be interacting with District Directors of Education on his tour. According to him they are the ones who are on the ground and therefore more likely to know the cause of the problem. What this tells me is that to date the Ministry of Education is unaware of the problems basic and second cycle students face. To date the Ministry has no idea of why a good number of them cannot comprehend what is taught in the classroom. If that is so, then we are in one big of a problem.

First I must say that the issue has been heavily politicized, just like any other developmental issue in this country. The impression is being created that we had performed very well previously. To the contrary we hadn’t. Over the years the figures have not been any different from this year’s. So its not as if we just woke up one day to experience an outrageous WASCE results. That has been the norm.
This is why I find Mr. Ayariga’s move quite funny. Mr. Minister, are you a musician who just came out with an album and needs to go on a tour to promote it? What has finding the problems of our education got to do with touring. Even if you have to seek the opinion of those who matter, do you have to move an entourage and media men around to do this? How about making it more scientific? Like, you send a questionnaire and collect the data. Get it analysed and draw proper conclusions.
If the Ministry of Education is unaware of the problems bedevilling our younger brothers and sisters at the basic and secondary levels let me offer some help. The first problem we have is that we have always tackled the issue of education in an isolated manner. The problem should be tackled with a multi-sector approach. The biggest problem we have with our educational system is nutrition. There is a lot of research work in the area of how a child’s nutrition affects his cognitive abilities. Most important amongst the nutrients needed are iron and iodine. From the very time the mother lays seed till about five years after the child is born anything that goes wrong with the mother or the child’s nutrition can cause permanent damage to their cognitive abilities and hence their intelligence. With the problem of malnutrition so high in Ghana it is no surprise that through no faults of theirs some kids struggle so hard to comprehend what they are taught in the classroom.
Lets get into some statistics. About 33% of the districts in Ghana have serious iodine deficiency problems [MOH/UG survey 2002]. The most severe iodine deficiency was found in the Upper East and Upper West Regions, with 56.5% goitre prevalence. Overall, about 78 percent of children aged 6-59 months in Ghana are thought to have some level of anaemia, including 7 percent of children with severe anaemia. Vitamin A deficiencies affect 72% of Ghana’s under five population. Additionally, lactating mothers have low breast milk retinol levels [MOH survey, 2005]. These figures may seem outdated but I wonder whether anything much has changed. So it stands to reason that even if we take care of all the other challenges faced by our education so kids will still have problems because of the permanent damage caused them during childhood.
Another problem we have is the approach to teaching. Teaching has always been done in a robust, strict, too-serious manner. Most of our teachers have always taught as if what is been taught is so different from what we do and experience everyday. So it becomes very difficult to apply what we are taught to our everyday lives. A typical example is the teaching of mathematics in this country. If you took a mathematics book that was written in, say, the US, you might think it is a book of photography. Very colourful pictures of the environment and how they relate to the topic in question are displayed. This makes reading these books sheer fun. Take a mathematics book written in Ghana and all you see are figures and letters. Such books do not even attract the so-called ‘mathematics sharks’, let alone those who have been made to believe that the course if tough.
In this modern day of technology there is a lot that we can do to make teaching more interactive and meaningful to our everyday observations. The trend now is using computer animations and graphics to help the student visualise and relate to what is being taught. With corporate bodies helping to provide computers to schools we can also begin to use the latest trends to advance our course. Lets not always be the ones to use a particular product years after it has been discarded.

Kwaku Botwe. kwakubotwe@execs.com