Future PPP gov’t will fine parents for not taking their children to school – Flagbearer

The Flagbearer of the Progressive People’s Party, Brigitte Dzogbenuku, has promised to enforce the policy requiring parents to send their children to school.

She said although Ghana has a Free, Compulsory Basic Education (FCUBE) policy, not much has been done on the compulsory part.

Brigitte Dzogbenuku recalled that while in school abroad, her father was queried by school authorities for her absence from school for only one day.

She said a similar culture would be introduced in Ghana if the PPP is elected in the December 7th presidential elections.

The flagbearer said the measures to enforce FCUBE fully should not be seen as punishing parents.

The PPP repeated its plans to abolish the Basic Education Certificate Examinations if voted into office come December 7.

According to her, children at the basic level should not be assessed using the examination structure.

She argued that this decision leaves the students worse off.

“Each year of BECE, for the past 10 years, we have lost about 1,000 pupils thrown out of school because they fail and when they fail, they end as dropouts.

“They end up completely shattered after the exit exams and if they are unable to recover they end up doing all sorts of things. We intend to do more of the high school diploma program,” she said in a Citi interview.

This is not the first time the party has expressed interest in the country’s education system. It made a similar call during the campaign period in 2016.

The party’s Director of Elections, Nana Ofori Owusu, in 2017, described the examinations as senseless as it only helps in producing a society that’s challenged.

He explained that every child has his or her own developmental stage where the student develops his abilities but writing BECE takes away that choice and forces students to conform.

Using his educational background as an example, the PPP stalwart narrated that he was privileged to have schooled in the United States and cited that students are disallowed from writing exams till they advance from the basic level.

Currently, BECE is the main examination to qualify students for admission into secondary and vocational institutions in Ghana and Nigeria.

It is written after three years of junior high school examination. It is administered by the Ghana Education Service under the Ministry of Education.

The examination consists of multiple-choice and written questions and continuous assessment marks provided by the schools.

In Ghana, candidates are graded on a nine-point scale, with grade 1 for highest performance and grade 9 for lowest.

Over the years, examinations have become part of the tools used to assess students’ progress at schools.

But there has been a growing concern of whether this mode of assessment is the right way to go. Some have asked if these examinations are by far the best way to promote students to the next level of the academic ladder.