The Second Vice Chairman of New Patriotic Party in the Central Region, Kingsley Karikari Bondzi, has suggested that the incoming New Patriotic Party (NPP) government must build boarding houses for all the Community Day Senior High Schools completed under the John Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) government.
According to him, the introduction of the facility will make the schools relevant in helping to keep and effectively groom the students to be future leaders.
Speaking on Eyewitness News on Thursday, the trained teacher said it was important for this to be done since in most cases, the schools are not easily accessible, forcing students to walk for several kilometers, a situation that discourages students.
“These schools they are not beneficial to the people. I am a professional teacher and when you go to Otuam, the school is about 10 kilometres from the town so the distance alone get parents to pay more than they would have paid for a boarding school.”
“I have taught for 17 years. In Ghana, these kind of schools cannot train anybody. Day schools are not good for Ghana especially where it is located. For you to make inroads in education, you need to arrest the night life of teenagers, teenagers face a lot of challenges and distraction so for you to improve on education especially on teenagers, you need to arrest their night life and the best way to do that is in a boarding house; and in the absence of a boarding house; a day school must be able to provide services like preps so that they can go in and study from about 6:00pm to 10:00pm,” he said.
Mr. Karikari Bondzi said the incoming New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration, will not abandon the existing community day schools since they are state property.
He however suggested that, they must be transformed into boarding schools to serve the actual purpose.
He further noted that, the NPP government had the alternative of introducing boarding houses to the existing school facilities or building additional ones closer to towns.
President John Mahama as part of his election 2012 campaign promises pledged to build 200 new Community Day Senior High Schools across the country, to address the issue of access to quality education in the country.
With barely a month to exit office, President Mahama only commissioned less than 50 of the schools.
He said about 123 of the schools were at various stages of completion and promised they would be completed under his second term in office if he was given the mandate.
Following his defeat to the opposition, NPP’s Nana Akufo-Addo, it is unclear if the remaining 123 schools would be completed.
In most cases, the completed schools are not serving their purpose fully.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
