Make SHS four years – UCC Academic Director
Prof Kofi Awusabo-Asare, the Director of Academic Planning and Quality Assurance of the University of Cape Coast, has suggested the reversion of the three-year senior high school system to four years to create an enabling environment for the students to develop better.
He said the time had come for the education sector to come out with policies that would help develop the education system to meet the transitional needs of the adolescent and young population instead of doing politics with the education needs.
Prof Awusabu-Asare said this at his inaugural lecture on the Topic “Transition from Adolescence into adulthood in Ghana: what do we really know?” at UCC.
The lecture, chaired by the Vice Chancellor of the University Professor Domwini Dabire Kuupole, was attended by lecturers, chiefs, students and a cross section of the public.
Prof Awusabo- Asare said even though governments had made efforts to improve the quality of education, none of them since independence had been able to implement universal education.
He said the nation still recorded about 68 percent illiterates with 29% from the rural areas whiles about 10 % was found in the urban areas.
He said with current trends in development, it was imperative to educate the adolescent and also provide them with opportunities for work.
Prof Awusabo- Asare said the interface of education, family formation, healthy living, lack of work and political consciousness constituted emerging challenges in the transition of adolescence into citizenship for the individual and the country.
Prof Awusabo-Asare said there was the absence of a nationally representative prospective data collection in the country and stressed the need to obtain systematically collect adequate and reliable data for the study of the lives of young people in the country.
He in this regarded recommended the development and implementation of programmes for the youth who should be informed by the available information.
According to him the last five decades have witnessed an increase in the number of people entering the adolescence stage and the lengthening of the period between childhood and the assumption of adult roles.
Prof Kuupole expressed concern about what he described as a mismatch between education and employment in the country and tasked the Faculty and Institute of Education of UCC to help address the education needs of the country to fulfill the objectives of setting up the Institute of Education in the University.
Source: GNA