"Factors us in education reforms"

THE Book Publishers’ Association says it will appreciate it if its members, who are major stakeholders in education, will be involved in any decision by the government on the educational reform to enable the association make its input, as well as the necessary preparation.
It said should it become necessary for the curriculum or the textbooks to be changed, the association should be informed early to enable its members to have enough time to work, since their businesses tended to suffer anytime there was a change in the country’s educational system.
The association complained that its members were usually not involved when such decisions were taken but they were called at short notice to publish new textbooks in line with those changes, a process which needed huge capital investment and adequate human resource.
It said, for example, that it was only last year that the government contracted some members of the association to develop textbooks for the four-year senior high school system which they had completed and begun distributing.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Accra yesterday, the President of the association, Mr Elliot Agyare, said it was unfortunate that publishers had to go through so much strain to develop new curriculum for schools only for it to be changed after a short while.
He was reacting to a Daily Graphic story which quoted the Minister of Education designate, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, as saying that one of the first things the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government was likely to do in the educational sector was abolish the four-year duration of the senior high school (SHS) and revert to the earlier three-year programme.
In another development, a lecturer at the University of Ghana, Professor Kofi Agyekum, has said the frequent changes in the country’s educational system tend to affect students who always suffer because of changes in syllabi.
Speaking on Peace FM’s morning show, “Kokrokoo”, yesterday, Prof Agyekum appealed to the new government to allow the four-year system to run for at least five years when the first batch of students would have entered university.
He said since the first batch was to enter the university in 2010, it would be difficult to determine whether the system was an improvement on the previous one or not before we could talk of changing it and added that there was the need for us as a country to have patience for certain things.
Commenting on the argument that the four-year duration would put a lot of stress on parents and heads of second-cycle institutions, Prof Agyekum said parents should be prepared to offer the best opportunities for their children.
He stressed that the cost of better education at the second-cycle level, which was the foundation, should not be an issue and revealed that there were some pre-schools which charged even higher than many second-cycle schools, as well as the universities.
He noted that parents should do well to pay for the additional year if that was what would help make their children better humans in future.