Ministry of Education Discourages Protocol Requests.

 Scramble to get into the bests senior high schools in the past has arose a lot of sentiments in the past from the public. This is because some students who do well but are from deprived schools are disenfranchised from the opportunity to study in some of the best schools in the country due to protocol placements.

The issue of protocol placement in well endowed Senior High Schools has been a subject for public discussion in the country for several years. Concerns have been raised over how this system denies brilliant but needy students from deprived schools, access to some of the highly rated senior high schools in the country.

The Minister of Education, Prof. Naa Jane Opoku Agyeman, has in a strong warning stated that the ministry will not tolerate any protocol request for placement as the country awaits the BECE results.

She lamented that the protocol list system was disenfranchising students from deprived school which should also benefit from the opportunity to attend the first class schools.

“Whiles we await the BECE results, we want to explain that the ministry will not tolerate any protocol request. We know our children can learn and pass. We also know we can expand the numbers of high performing schools, hence, all these monies that we are putting into the system. This is a loan that the government will pay. We will do the first phase and evaluate it. We want to see specific results coming out of this, that we can measure. We also want to eventually, ensure that we are reducing our status as consumers and that we are creating. We can create the things too and then maybe take them to other countries,” she said.

She added that their plan as a ministry is to eventually cover each senior high school in the country, which they think is possible with all the three projects coming on. Ghana's significant progress in education includes increasing access to education at all levels, the achievement of gender parity at the primary level, raising the literacy rate of persons under 25 years of age, increasing the textbook ratio from one textbook to three pupils and four textbooks to one child.

She urged stakeholders’, especially, parents and teachers to commit to improving quality teaching and learning in the country to promote sustainable development.

Hamidu Abdul-Lateef.