Students with ‘A1’ In Maths Cannot Calculate Percentage, What Kind of ‘A1’ Is That? - KNUST Lecturer

Dr. Abdul Samed Muntaka lecturer at the School of Business at the “Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology” (KNUST), has questioned the credibility of the grades of students, that enabled them to be admitted into the various universities.

He is amazed by the current performance of students at the universities in Ghana.

“I teach business Maths at the university and you will be amazed that you are seeing people who are coming to the school with A1 in Mathematics and they cannot calculate percentages. What kind of A1 is that?”

“So you wonder how they even got this A1 and this one I’m not putting any school on the line, you will find that it cuts across. Pupils are coming with grades they cannot defend. We need to make sure that whatever we are doing at the basic level is apt because we should know that this basic level is like the root and you can never have the leaves to do well when the root of the tree is sick. It will not work.”

“You know, I was fortunate to be a transition person between the old system and the new system. I remember in 1987 when the SSS was going to be introduced, there were some concerns raised. Some of the concerns were brushed aside and today you see that people are graduating early (and) the economy is not expanding fast enough to be able to accommodate them. These are people who can even function. So if the people who can function, who have been trained well cannot find jobs then you can imagine what will happen (to) the people who are half-baked? Because somebody who is supposed to spend 3 years in school, the person has spent a total of 147 days that accounts for about one and a half years. …if you look at the school term, if you take holidays off, it is like one and a half years of the school term. Even the three-year person didn’t survive, how can the one-and-a-half-year person survive?”

“You know, generally, a curriculum is supposed to provide guidance, guidance that is supposed to lead us to an end. So a pupil or a student is taken through this curriculum, a certain outcome is expected. Now one of the biggest challenges with the current curriculum is that the teachers in the field say that they have not been trained adequately. Now, you expect somebody to take a material, imbibe it in somebody, and then expect a certain outcome if this person himself or herself does not have adequate training on what this curriculum is, then, of course, we cannot achieve the outcome that we are looking for” he said.

“So for me, the GES and managers of education want to make sure that the New Curriculum is anything to go by, first, it must have wide stakeholder engagement, let parents, teachers, everybody agree with it, and then provide adequate training for the teachers who are supposed to deliver this Curriculum, so that at the end of the day, we can achieve the ends that we are expected” he added.

Source: ghanamediaonline.com