SHS/TVET admission cut-off point is colonial mentality – Eduwatch
Africa Education Watch (EduWatch) says the second-cycle school admission cut-off point is a colonial mentality that restricts Junior High School graduates’ access to secondary education based on competitive academic abilities.
Describing the cut-off point as a 20th-century philosophy grounded in a strata-based approach to shaping society, using academic intelligence, the African education think tank has called for the cut-off policy to be abolished.
“With increasing population and unemployment, the world has agreed through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to adopt a universalist approach to secondary education
Secondary education now becomes a basic right needed for the human capital development of every human being rather than a reward for successful competitors
By this, every citizen should have at least, a secondary level education to ensure either transition to tertiary or the world of work at the elementary level,” the Education Watch said in a social media post sighted by Pretertiary.com.
Against the cut-off point, the Director of African Education Watch, Kofi Asare emphasised that Junior High School graduates with an aggregate of 6 to 54 must be given admission to any of the public second-cycle schools in the country.
Acknowledging the role of the admission cut-off which was used in the past to reduce enrollment numbers in secondary schools due to limited infrastructure he said infrastructure cannot be used as a continued justification.
“Some teachers do not see why aggregates 37-54 should occupy seats in their class; that they are not teachable because they are academic ‘failures’. This mindset itself is problematic and systemic.
I believe every human being has something useful in them. We must position our education system to identify and nurture talents, rather than suppress, discriminate and judge.
Those who have an interest in semi-academics like sports, TVET, theatre, music etc should find a place to develop within our secondary education system. I have seen a Creative Arts SHS in Kwadaso..that’s a great start.
This is one way we can improve free SHS which is already providing unprecedented access to about 80% of basic school leavers.
The word ‘fail’ must be extinguished from our assessment system completely. The system must seek to identify and build; not fail.
In every serious education system, anything akin to the failure of a student means, teacher, parental, institutional and policy failure,” the Director of the Africa Education Watch said in the social media post.