“If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say unto this mountain, Remove from here to yonder; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." [Matthew 17: 20]
Whoever says that our African youth cannot match the world’s best, does not know what they are talking about! It’s all in how the youth are raised. And further, it boils down to how the teachers, administrators and government officials develop themselves as professional educators to uplift this most important vocation on which great nations are built. Continuous education to keep up or stay ahead of the times is in everybody’s interest.
Moreover the nation has a moral responsibility to grow our youth to be the very best they can be. It’s not that we are doing the youth an undeserved favour; it is a downright moral, social and economic responsibility of every nation to grow their youth to reach higher grounds.
And it is possible to change things for the better: Albert Einstein said it as bluntly as only Einstein can: It is the mark of folly (he used the word “insanity”) to keep doing the same things in the same ways and expect different results. Also, if you think innovations are expensive try complacency; that is, the complacency that fails half of the nation’s youth in BECE exams in public schools year in year out.
Often the disillusioning factors come from apathetic bureaucracies; and to make any headway that anomaly has to factored into possible solutions, and resolved. The uncertainties - last minute directives and ambivalent attitudes of the education bureaucracies, coupled with possibilities of leaked exam questions - can be exhausting. Some private schools have opted for alternatives like the Cambridge IGCSE, and the International Baccalaureate (IB).
But for our purposes in Ghana, we need to re-focus on some practicalities even in using the GES and WAEC as benchmarks. The two bodies must be improved upon and made more efficient in practice without abandoning them.
Firstly, structurally speaking in terms of efficient curricular delivery, it is important that the use of Information Technology is considered for the following key requirements: 1) Schemes of Work / Weekly Forecasts, 2) Teaching and Learning Materials (TLMs), and 3) Lesson Notes / Methodology / Instructional Strategies. Different names may be given variously to the above: but the meanings boil down simply as follows:
Across the disciplines, the schemes of work or weekly forecasts show - day by day, and week by week - the specific topics in each subject to be taught in the course of each term to fulfil the requirements of the GES syllabus. The TLMs are the very lessons that support the schemes, and they complement the use of regular textbooks. The Lesson Notes or Instructional Strategies show the step by step methods or activities in how the various topics will be taught, and assessed for successful outcomes.
Those three key factors are mutually inclusive and support each other, and they must be structurally sound and effectively deployed. The use of Information Technology helps to eliminate the cumbersome chores of repetitive, term-by- term, year-after-year handwritten notes which many teachers dread, and do not do anyway. The frustrations of the old process put undue stresses on many teachers, especially new teachers and national service personnel. Many hand-written materials themselves tend not to be available for immediate use in classrooms at the beginning of each term; they pile up in heaps on the administrators’ desks for “marking”.
Prepared, computerized, and available ahead of time, all materials may be ready for use from day one of week one of every new term. The idea is to create, store, access, transmit, and update information continually. The time saving effort will increase productivity where all materials are available for everybody in the system including the students themselves - who tend to be empty handed without the information and materials they need to study and pass the BECE.
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