Minister of Education, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh, says he will resign if anyone produces evidence that he threatened to dismiss any head of public school that records 90 per cent of failure in the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination.
Dr Opoku Prempeh was reported to have warned basic and second cycle school heads they will be dismissed should their students record 90 per cent failure in their final examination; a comment that has been condemned.
“Any school head who superintends over a failure of over 90% cannot be allowed to continue operation without accounting to the Ghana Education Service (GES),” he told heads of senior high schools in Kumasi.
Some teacher unions have rather called for the dismissal of the Minister accusing him of failing to identify problems that confront the educational sector before making that pronouncement.
Speaking to TV3, Dr Opoku Prempeh denied the claim, and challenged anyone with evidence to come forward.
“The person who alleges I said it should prove it. If he proves I will resign as a minister. I haven’t said that anywhere. It is the duty of their regulators; Ghana Education Service who should drive standards and performances goals,” he told TV3 in an exclusive interview.
Dr Opoku Prempeh indicated there are plans to monitor activities of the heads of institutions to increase quality and employable students in the coming years.
Meanwhile, at an interaction session with the various units under the Ministry of Education he criticised the Council for Technical and Vocational Training (COTVET) for being too laid back in their operations.
He was of the view that COTVET should be monitoring teacher absenteeism which has dropped to nine per cent since 2015.
Dr Opoku Prempeh also asked the accreditation board to sanitise the system and check on numerous certificates churned out by some institutions.
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