I’ve been thinking deeply about the pervasive poor performance of pupils
in our basic schools, especially here in the Upper West Region. Every
now and then, the main actors in the educational sector—teachers,
educational authorities, parents among others—keep shifting the blame
from one to another like musical chairs. The problem even becomes dire
when all of them offload their share of the blame to the pupil. What a
pity!
Without any in-depth document reference, I made a little scan of the
not-too-distant past which revealed better pass rates at the BECE.
Mention can be made of Tendamba ‘94 and ‘95 Year groups of BECE in the
region. In contrast, no mention can be made of any good year in the
recent past. However, the sharp contrasts between then and today are
severalfold.
Most striking among the contrasts are the quality and quantity of
teachers. In those days, junior secondary schools were populated with
Cert ‘A’ and unprofessional teachers. Today, there are B.Ed, M.Ed. and
MPhil holders teaching at the same level. Even diploma holders are at
the primary and preschool levels. Think of quantity and you will notice
that every school in Wa township is somehow fully if not overstaffed
with these ‘highly qualified’ teachers. Unfortunately, academic
performance has been falling freely.
A number of questions arise here:
1. What causes this devastating trend of performance?
2. What are the present and future consequences of this trend of failures?
3. What measures can we put in place to improve academic performance?
Discussing this topic dispassionately, I will begin with the causes, the
main focus of today’s write-up. One major cause is the poor foundation
given to pupils at the lower levels (KG to lower primary). The
children graduate from primary to JHS with most of them being ABSOLUTELY
UNABLE to read and write. Thus, how will the JHS teacher handle such a
pupil to pass an external exam within two and a half years? This
preventable situation traces its root cause to the use of local language
as the medium of instruction at KG to lower primary levels. Worsening
the situation, most teachers in the region especially those in the
villages still extensively use the local languages as the medium of
instruction at the JHS level. This issue probably makes no news; I guess
you guess so.
Another factor that contributes to the pupils’ performing poorly in the
Upper West Region is POOR SUPERVISION together with low dosages of
teaching. Undoubtedly, precious input of teachers alone can make a
tremendous change in pupils’ performance at the BECE. But how can
teachers make the needed and the precious inputs? —supervision must be
adequate.
Hanging on avoidable excuses such as ‘no fuel for supervision’ and ‘many
schools in my circuit’, most circuit supervisors (CSs) perform their
supervisory duties abysmally. This appalling supervision was revealed
from the survey I conducted. Supervisory work has now been reduced to
two secondary issues: adequate preparation of schemes of work and lesson
notes, and regular attendance to school. Obviously, lesson notes in
themselves are speechless in much the same way as teachers conversing in
the staff common room or under a staff common shade amounts to no
teaching. Supervisors must never pretend.
In nearly all the thin and ill-focused supervisory work, most teachers
are rated excellent. However, when you interact with the note and
exercise books of their pupils, the said teachers perform
disappointingly. For instance, last term (second term of the 2014/2015
academic year) had fifteen weeks. If we take out weeks 1, 8, 14 and 15
for cleaning, midterm exam and finally end-of-term exams and marking of
scripts respectively, we are left with 11 effective weeks for serious
academic work.
Consequently, if a JHS mathematics teacher teaches across the three
streams with a total population of 200 pupils, s/he should be able to
conduct and mark at least ONE EXERCISE per week. Remember that giving
exercises and marking is a key component of teaching mathematics in
particular. So any output below 11 exercises for such a teacher should
be an underperformance. Dear reader, just visit any school in the
regional capital where supervisors probably need no fuel to visit and
see whether pupils had up to half this expected number of assignments.
Most probably lacking or failing to enforce any benchmarking indices to
measure the performance of teachers, the supervisory unit of GES here in
Wa seems to accept everything done by teachers. Quite unfortunate!
Another reason why pupils perform poorly is that they over-rely on
foreign materials, otherwise known as leakages. (This issue is somehow
nationwide but it wields its heaviest toll in the Upper West. Remember
the Region is almost always rated last in the country.) The ancient and
groundless belief that schools in southern Ghana get leakages every year
makes both teachers and pupils to misdirect their focus and scarce
resources. For example, teachers are quick to convince parents that
pupils in other regions perform better because they get leakages or
assistance in the exam halls. In consequence, pupils make unnecessary
contributions for teachers to either help them get leakages or bribe
invigilators to teach them during exams. What is the usual effect? A
trail of lackadaisical attitude towards learning. And when such
unprofessional arrangements misfire as has been the norm, the pupil is
destroyed beyond measure.
Yet adding its hand to poor performance is ‘negligence of parents’ in
the upbringing of their children. Lately, most parents seem to care more
about unnecessary things rather than about the welfare of their
children. In particular, most parents care less whether their wards
learn at home or not. NOT A DIVERSION, PLEASE. The root cause here is
that teachers NEVER give homework! Instead of struggling to imagine how
teachers conjure marks to fill the Homework Column of the Continuous
Assessment Forms, just come and crosscheck the schoolwork books. Even if
circuit supervisors and teachers reacting to this write-up by giving
pupils more exercises and backdating them can never cover up the mess.
The mess is as bright as ‘Dumsor’.
I will return with Part II which focuses on the consequences and the way
forward. Drop a comment. The writer derives no benefit by exposing
anybody’s negligence at work but he benefits tremendously if everybody
does his or her work well and our children perform academically to their
God-given potentials.
………………………………………….
ABDUL-MOOMIN TAHIRU (STRONGMAN)
E-Mail: Strongchoo2013@gmail.com
Mobile: 0204206822 / 0244688661

Nice thought and advice, I believe our leaders will take this into consideration
I’m gone to tell my little brother, that he should also go to
see this weblog on regular basis to obtain updated from hottest information.
Hi everyone, it’s my first go to see at this site,
and piece of writing is genuinely fruitful in support of me, keep up posting these
content.
Greetings from Florida! I’m bored to tears at work so I decided
to browse your website on my iphone during lunch break.
I really like the information you provide here
and can’t wait to take a look when I get home. I’m shocked at how fast your blog loaded on my
cell phone .. I’m not even using WIFI, just 3G .. Anyhow,
very good blog!
Very nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to mention that I’ve
really enjoyed surfing around your weblog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing on your rss
feed and I hope you write again very soon!
I do not even know how I ended up here, but I thought
this post was great. I don’t know who you are but definitely you are going to a famous
blogger if you aren’t already 😉 Cheers!
Asking questions are genuinely good thing if you are not understanding anything totally, however this post provides fastidious understanding even.
Excellent blog! Do you have any recommendations for aspiring writers?
I’m planning to start my own site soon but I’m a little lost on everything.
Would you advise starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid
option? There are so many options out there that I’m totally
confused .. Any suggestions? Cheers!
Thank you, I’ve recently been searching for information about this topic for ages and
yours is the best I have came upon so far. But, what in regards to
the conclusion? Are you sure about the source?