Deputy Minister of Education in charge of pre-tertiary, Yaw Osei Adutwum has said former President John Dramani Mahama has not been properly informed on his decision to abolish the double-track system introduced at the Senior High School level within a year of his tenure in office if he is elected President in the December elections.
According to the Deputy Minister, abolishing the double-track system without providing adequate infrastructure will make public Senior High Schools inaccessible to children from poor homes.
Dr. Adutwum explained that the abolition of the system without the corresponding provision of infrastructure will lead to an introduction of an aggregate cut-off point for admission into Senior High Schools in order to accommodate the number of students admitted into schools.
The cut-off point, he opined, will disadvantage children from less privileged family backgrounds who attend deprived public basic schools and do not perform well at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
In his opinion, scrapping the double-track system will widen the inequality gap between children from poor families and those from privileged families in accessing Senior High education which the double-track was introduced to solve.
This, he stated, is because the abolition of the double-track and the resultant introduction of a cut-off point will disqualify children of the poor who perform abysmally at the BECE examination from gaining admissions into public Senior High Schools.
He recalled that, prior to the introduction of the system, students from poor families could not gain admission into the public schools because of their poor academic performances and this compelled parents of these students to resort to borrowing in order to finance their education in private SHSs. It is therefore his view that the former president’s decision should it be implemented would lead to the previous situation.
“He doesn’t understand. If he (Mahama) has actually been advised properly and has looked at the numbers, if you cancel double-track within one year, you will have to introduce cut-off to reduce the numbers. Anybody who talks about review and mentions double-track, Ghana should be aware that if you happen to be poor, you are in trouble. The man (Mahama) is going to use another way of meeting that requirement and the poor will be disadvantaged big time,” he stated on JoyNews TV.
Dr. Adutwum disclosed that the Akufo-Addo government is undertaking educational infrastructure in all schools that run the double-track system in a bid to gradually phase-out the system.
Former President Mahama who is the flagbearer of the opposition NDC has served notice of reviewing the Free SHS policy as well as abolish the double-track system implemented by the Nana Addo administration should he win the 2020 elections.
His contender in the December polls, President Nana Addo , however, insists that the former President intends to cancel the entire policy.
