Memories of December 7
By Kofi Akordor
Ghanaians were heaping tonnes of praise on themselves. The foreign observer missions were profuse in their commendation at the turn of events on Sunday, December 7, 2008. All were unanimous — the presidential and parliamentary elections had been held in a peaceful atmosphere without any violence or intimidation and the outcome was a free and fair. Whether everything had been transparent could, however, not be told with any conviction.
The country succeeded in maintaining a record as one of the few countries on this turbulent continent called Africa where catapults, machetes, bows and arrows, guns and military armoured vehicles were not deployed into action to complete the unfinished business which the ballot box left undone.
We have emerged from a gruelling electioneering and energy sapping voting process with our national pride intact, even though one could not discount some disappointments and bruised or dented egos.
Sunday, December 7, 2008 is now history and we can only live with its memories, whether bitter or sweet and some useful lessons to guide us in similar endeavours in future. For the candidates/parties and their die-hard supporters, they must begin to realise that the saying; “All that glitters is not gold”, can have its equivalent on the political battlefield like; “All that crowd at political rallies do not transform into votes”. Otherwise, we would not have been subjected to another round of gruelling campaigning with its insults, lies and vain promises. The consolation is that it is our own decision to go for another round of the exercise so that at the end of the day the final choice will be our own and not an imposition from any quarter.
The two candidates — Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Professor John Evans Atta Mills — whose inability to cross the 50 per cent plus mark has forced us into the run-off may have to review their campaign strategies. By now it should have dawned on them that distributing fat wads of currency notes to so-called opinion leaders and king makers or bussing thousands of unemployed youth to rally grounds after pumping gallons of hard liquor into them will not do the trick when it matters most. As they always say, ‘it is our own money so if you bring it we shall collect it’.
They should address current problems confronting the people and focus more on their strengths than the perceived weaknesses of the opponent. Trying to undermine an opponent with lies and concocted stories only irritate the electorate and do not bring good returns on the D-day. Some of the adverts in both the print and electronic media are just waste of money and add to the subtractions.
Sometimes it is better they listen to their inner selves, instead of those hordes of advisers who may strip them naked without they knowing. Remember the story of the king with the beautiful cloth? He was told only his enemies would not see the wonderful cloth. In order not to be labelled as an enemy of the king, everybody saw the cloth until an innocent child pointed at the king’s nakedness. By then it was too late. The harm had been done. Once they know the cash is flowing, the advisers and special assistants will be at their best to give you all sorts of assurances and if you fail to put your ears on the ground you will wake up a day after the election laughing at the wrong side of your mouth.
For the party in power or the candidate contesting on the ruling party’s ticket, some of the promises do not make any impression on the electorate. They ask several questions which you may not hear, let alone try to answer. It becomes worse when, in a frenzy, we begin to initiate projects which we well know may never be completed. That amounts to insulting the intelligence of the electorate and they never forgive those who inflict such pain on them.
The use of the tribal or ethnic card can have its boomerang effects. While it may favour you in one area, it may work against you in another area. Moreover, it will be hypocritical to condemn ethnic bias when you think it is working against you but highlight it when you are in the gain. So it is wrong for any candidate to go to his area or home region and tell the people to vote for him because he is one of them and yet complain when the other candidate also makes a similar plea to his people. No President can govern a divided country and, therefore, the candidates must themselves be appealing to all sections of the public. Ethnic messages during campaigns have the potential of dividing the country.
The media received their fair share of praise and commendation from the observer teams that came to monitor the elections. They all concluded that the press is free and vibrant and contributed a lot in information dissemination before, during and after the elections.
In fact, the media played their watchdog role effectively and for this mention must be made of the FM radio stations which kept listeners glued to their radio sets throughout the voting process.
Media practitioners will, notwithstanding the high marks given them, be the first to admit that a lot of them contributed to the heightened tension which preceded the elections and which persisted throughout the exercise.
Some of the media practitioners became more or less propagandists for political parties and contesting candidates and threw the ethics of the profession to the wind in the process. If they do not know by now, some of the materials they release into the public domain do more damage to their clients than good.
The EC has come out again from another electoral process with good testimonials. It still has to improve upon its performance in the run-off. What many do not know is that what was seen as the EC’s good performance was actually a reflection of the patience and tolerance of Ghanaians. Electoral violence seldom occur during the voting. But that should not be taken for granted. It is the counting, collation and announcing of the results which give room for suspicion and trigger violence. This idea of counting, recounting and recounting of ballot papers must be checked.
The EC must also address the long queues which formed at some polling stations, as against the smaller number of voters at certain polling stations. When people stand for long hours in the tropical sun to vote, they are prone to anger at the least provocation and this can be compounded if there should be any electoral dispute.
The National Election Security Task Force has already made that observation and recommended the opening of more polling stations on December 28, 2008 for the run-off of the presidential elections. We hope the EC will listen to good advice.
Many people are of the view that it is time we modernised our electoral system. In this computer age, it is humiliating to stand in the sun for hours to thumbprint a ballot paper. The counting system is another ordeal which creates room for manipulation and unnecessary suspicion. It should be possible to computerise the voting system and no amount spent in this direction will be wasted.
Sunday, December 28, 2008 is not far away. It is the expectation of Ghanaians that it will come to pass peacefully, only this time, there will be a President-elect.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Empty classrooms and desperate parents
By Kofi Akordor
THE beginning of every academic year is a period of mental torture and physical agony to many parents and school authorities. On one side are desperate parents moving up and down looking for suitable schools for their children. Suitable schools here are the well-established ones with long records of good academic performance. Suitable here also means schools that are not only good in terms of academic performance but are also not too far away from concerned and doting parents.
On the other side are headmasters/headmistresses of the so-called well-endowed schools who are at their wits end trying to fend off demands from desperate and aggressive parents who will not take ‘NO’ for an answer if told the school had filled all its admission vacancies. These demands come from old students who cannot be easily ignored because of their contributions to the development of the school, friends, relatives, church members, traditional rulers and the ‘almighty’ political heavyweights.
Sometimes the pressure becomes so great and insurmountable that school heads simply place ‘No vacancy’ notices in front of their administration blocks and vanish into thin air. In the past, when the decision to admit or not to admit lay entirely in the hands of the school authorities, that period was described as the cocoa season of the educational authorities and you either played by the rules or suffered the consequences.
The introduction of the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) over the last three academic years or so was made with good intentions to, among other things, ease the pressure on school authorities, reduce the burden of school search on parents, close avenues for shady deals and ensure that students are placed in the right schools as per their performance in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
Unfortunately, like many new things, the computerised placement system ran into difficulties, some of which could not necessarily be placed at the doorstep of the managers. In the process, the relief the CSSPS sought to bring to both candidates and school authorities was virtually blurred. Parents continued to move from one school to another, seeking admission for their children at the beginning of the academic year. School heads, on the other hand, continued to suffer the pain of explaining to frustrated parents why they could not offer admissions to their children.
Despite the assurances that the CSSPS will improve with time, it appears for now the problems associated with fresh admissions will not go away because they go beyond the computerised placement system.
The tragedy of the situation is that while parents are still struggling to place their children in schools, the Ghana Education Service has also made claim that a lot of schools are yet to have their full complement of admissions. According to a report in the Junior Graphic (Wednesday, December 3-9, 2008), with only a few weeks to the end of the first term of the 2008/2009 academic year, most schools in the Volta, Eastern, Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions are still struggling to fill their classrooms with qualified candidates.
The breakdown shows that in the Volta Region, out of the 72 senior high schools, as many as 64 have vacancies for qualified BECE candidates. In the Eastern Region, the schools with vacancies are 43, out of the existing 78 schools.
In the Ashanti Region, 39 schools have declared vacancies, while in Brong Ahafo 38 schools have vacancies for fresh students. There are 27 schools in the Northern Region with vacancies, while Western Region has 25 schools with similar problems.
In the other regions, Central has 19 schools that could not fill their vacancies; Upper East has nine; Upper West 11, and Greater Accra seven.
By the close of this year’s CSSPS, 16,000 candidates are still searching, notwithstanding the long list of schools still thirsting for new students. The question, then, is, why this puzzle of floating candidates in the midst of vacant schools? A close study of the schools still waiting for the arrival of new students while the first term draws to a close will show a common denominator. All these schools are in the rural areas which share common problems, with a few others in the big towns and cities. They simply do not have the facilities to qualify them as senior high schools.
Most of these schools do not have the requisite infrastructure such as classroom blocks, laboratories, libraries, workshops and dormitories to make academic work exciting and challenging.
Apart from the physical infrastructure and learning materials which these schools are lacking, getting qualified teachers for them has always been a problem. Under the circumstances, most parents will do anything to avoid these schools, if even that means waiting for another academic year.
The decision to build more senior high schools in the rural communities was laudable and well-intentioned, to primarily stem the exodus to the urban centres and cities to seek higher educational laurels. It was also to give more opportunities to the youth in the rural communities to have access to higher education without the drudgery of travelling long distances to other parts of the country.
Unfortunately, these laudable objectives could not be attained because the exercise fell short of expectation. Most of the schools could not mature enough into what they were expected to be — well-equipped and staffed schools to offer quality education to children in the rural communities.
Consequently, students from these schools could hardly make it to the tertiary level, given the competitive environment prevailing in the country, for obvious reasons, hence the reluctance of parents to risk the future of their children by enrolling them in those schools.
Some of the older schools in the urban centres and cities are not insulated from these deprivations. They, therefore, become the last choice for parents who are determined to give their children quality education.
It will, therefore, be wrong for anyone to think that parents are being too demanding when they insist on getting admission for their children in certain particular schools. The Catholic Church, for instance, has been able to put up very good schools in even the rural areas and products from those schools do not find it difficult to rub shoulders with the so-called first-class schools. Other religious institutions are doing the same.
To make the ground level to make it possible for candidates to accept admission to these community schools means adequately resourcing these schools with everything which makes a school a school and not just any confined area for teaching and learning.
Apart from expanding facilities in the well-established schools so that they can take more students, the communities should be given proper facelift so that they can be attractive not only to students but the teaching staff who get frustrated by the poor and inadequate facilities.
As they are now, most of these rural community senior high schools at best only prolong the time these children spend in school without adding any qualitative improvement to their academic career. The result is what we are seeing now — vacant schools and students without schools.
THE beginning of every academic year is a period of mental torture and physical agony to many parents and school authorities. On one side are desperate parents moving up and down looking for suitable schools for their children. Suitable schools here are the well-established ones with long records of good academic performance. Suitable here also means schools that are not only good in terms of academic performance but are also not too far away from concerned and doting parents.
On the other side are headmasters/headmistresses of the so-called well-endowed schools who are at their wits end trying to fend off demands from desperate and aggressive parents who will not take ‘NO’ for an answer if told the school had filled all its admission vacancies. These demands come from old students who cannot be easily ignored because of their contributions to the development of the school, friends, relatives, church members, traditional rulers and the ‘almighty’ political heavyweights.
Sometimes the pressure becomes so great and insurmountable that school heads simply place ‘No vacancy’ notices in front of their administration blocks and vanish into thin air. In the past, when the decision to admit or not to admit lay entirely in the hands of the school authorities, that period was described as the cocoa season of the educational authorities and you either played by the rules or suffered the consequences.
The introduction of the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) over the last three academic years or so was made with good intentions to, among other things, ease the pressure on school authorities, reduce the burden of school search on parents, close avenues for shady deals and ensure that students are placed in the right schools as per their performance in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
Unfortunately, like many new things, the computerised placement system ran into difficulties, some of which could not necessarily be placed at the doorstep of the managers. In the process, the relief the CSSPS sought to bring to both candidates and school authorities was virtually blurred. Parents continued to move from one school to another, seeking admission for their children at the beginning of the academic year. School heads, on the other hand, continued to suffer the pain of explaining to frustrated parents why they could not offer admissions to their children.
Despite the assurances that the CSSPS will improve with time, it appears for now the problems associated with fresh admissions will not go away because they go beyond the computerised placement system.
The tragedy of the situation is that while parents are still struggling to place their children in schools, the Ghana Education Service has also made claim that a lot of schools are yet to have their full complement of admissions. According to a report in the Junior Graphic (Wednesday, December 3-9, 2008), with only a few weeks to the end of the first term of the 2008/2009 academic year, most schools in the Volta, Eastern, Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions are still struggling to fill their classrooms with qualified candidates.
The breakdown shows that in the Volta Region, out of the 72 senior high schools, as many as 64 have vacancies for qualified BECE candidates. In the Eastern Region, the schools with vacancies are 43, out of the existing 78 schools.
In the Ashanti Region, 39 schools have declared vacancies, while in Brong Ahafo 38 schools have vacancies for fresh students. There are 27 schools in the Northern Region with vacancies, while Western Region has 25 schools with similar problems.
In the other regions, Central has 19 schools that could not fill their vacancies; Upper East has nine; Upper West 11, and Greater Accra seven.
By the close of this year’s CSSPS, 16,000 candidates are still searching, notwithstanding the long list of schools still thirsting for new students. The question, then, is, why this puzzle of floating candidates in the midst of vacant schools? A close study of the schools still waiting for the arrival of new students while the first term draws to a close will show a common denominator. All these schools are in the rural areas which share common problems, with a few others in the big towns and cities. They simply do not have the facilities to qualify them as senior high schools.
Most of these schools do not have the requisite infrastructure such as classroom blocks, laboratories, libraries, workshops and dormitories to make academic work exciting and challenging.
Apart from the physical infrastructure and learning materials which these schools are lacking, getting qualified teachers for them has always been a problem. Under the circumstances, most parents will do anything to avoid these schools, if even that means waiting for another academic year.
The decision to build more senior high schools in the rural communities was laudable and well-intentioned, to primarily stem the exodus to the urban centres and cities to seek higher educational laurels. It was also to give more opportunities to the youth in the rural communities to have access to higher education without the drudgery of travelling long distances to other parts of the country.
Unfortunately, these laudable objectives could not be attained because the exercise fell short of expectation. Most of the schools could not mature enough into what they were expected to be — well-equipped and staffed schools to offer quality education to children in the rural communities.
Consequently, students from these schools could hardly make it to the tertiary level, given the competitive environment prevailing in the country, for obvious reasons, hence the reluctance of parents to risk the future of their children by enrolling them in those schools.
Some of the older schools in the urban centres and cities are not insulated from these deprivations. They, therefore, become the last choice for parents who are determined to give their children quality education.
It will, therefore, be wrong for anyone to think that parents are being too demanding when they insist on getting admission for their children in certain particular schools. The Catholic Church, for instance, has been able to put up very good schools in even the rural areas and products from those schools do not find it difficult to rub shoulders with the so-called first-class schools. Other religious institutions are doing the same.
To make the ground level to make it possible for candidates to accept admission to these community schools means adequately resourcing these schools with everything which makes a school a school and not just any confined area for teaching and learning.
Apart from expanding facilities in the well-established schools so that they can take more students, the communities should be given proper facelift so that they can be attractive not only to students but the teaching staff who get frustrated by the poor and inadequate facilities.
As they are now, most of these rural community senior high schools at best only prolong the time these children spend in school without adding any qualitative improvement to their academic career. The result is what we are seeing now — vacant schools and students without schools.
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