The Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) has expressed disappointment at the exclusion of private school children from the maiden National Standardised Test (NST) which was conducted on December 17, 2021.
This was contained in a statement signed and copied to A1 Radio by the President of GNAPS Dr Damasus Tuurosong. GNAPs wondered whether the exclusion of the private schools in the NST was a move by government to make the private education system look less attractive to Ghanaians students and parents.
The Association argued that if the Ministry of Education was resource-challenged, the NST could have been postponed until such a time when resources would be available to cover both private and public pupils stressing that “the claim that this year’s NST was a pilot aimed at establishing ways of conducting subsequent tests cannot be a justification for excluding private school children from the test”.
Dr. Tuurosong, in the statement, opined that the NST could have provided a fair for government opportunity to assess the difference between the private and public school system at the basic level.
“With a test that assessed only public sector learners, the Ministry of Education (MoE) cannot claim to have achieved the NST’s objective of gathering data on the literacy and numeracy skills of all Basic Four children in the country. Besides, government cannot on the basis of this one-sided assessment initiate any interventions at the basic level since the NST failed to capture data that reflects the total picture. In research, comparative analysis of data often yields findings that the researcher can rely on to make far-reaching and all-encompassing recommendations towards improved performance”.
“Therefore, one expected the MoE and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to have taken interest in comparing the performance of the more than 15,000 public school children who sat for the test, with the performance of private school learners. Such comparison could bring to the fore disparities that would attract the attention of MoE and GES to improve quality of teaching and leaming in basic schools,” the statement said.
Dr. Tuurosong admitting to the weaknesses in the education system in Ghana argued that the only way to properly address same would be for government to “be interested in holistically addressing challenges to teaching and learning in all schools irrespective of their ownership type. The selective and sectional approach to fixing weaknesses in education must cease forthwith. Indeed, addressing variations in learner achievement by region, gender and location without factoring school ownership type into the equation cannot address the country’s education challenges”.
GNAPs contended that data collected through the recently conducted NST cannot be said to be a true and fair representation of education in Ghana. “GNAPs wishes to draw the MoE’s attention to the fact that their failure to include private schools in the NST renders data gathered on education outcomes incomplete and, therefore, unsuitable for policy-making and implementation purposes,” it argued.
Meanwhile, the Deputy Ranking Member for the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education and Member of Parliament for Builsa South, Dr. Clement Apaak has called for a full audit of the processes leading up to the writing of the National Standardised Test.
He alleged that not all 550,000 students slated for the National Standardised Test (NST) could participate due to poor planning on the part of the Ministry of Education.
He said teachers and students were put at risk while materials for the test could not get to certain centres on time.
A1Radioonline.com|101.1MHz| Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
