THE Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, told Parliament last Tuesday that his ministry was in the process of establishing an Independent National Inspectorate Board (INIB) to strengthen supervision and improve education delivery in basic schools.
He added that interviews were being conducted to recruit a chief inspector, two deputies and supporting staff to run the inspectorate board in Accra.
We do not contest the fact that a nation’s human resource is its greatest asset. Therefore, every effort that seeks to strengthen the educational system, especially at the basic level, is laudable.
However, in a situation where, as the minister himself acknowledged, there is already an Inspectorate Division at the Ghana Education Service (GES) which, in the good old days, performed its duties to satisfaction, we think the setting up of the INIB is superfluous.
This is especially so when viewed against the backdrop that the two bodies — the Inspectorate Division of the GES and the INIB — are going to work independently of each other.
While it is obvious that standards in public basic schools have fallen over the years and while the lack of proper supervision at that level can partly be blamed for that sad situation, certainly the solution does not lie in duplicating functions at the Ministry of Education.
The DAILY GRAPHIC is of the firm belief that the Inspectorate Division of the GES, if adequately resourced, will live up to its responsibilities.
Mr Tettey-Enyo told Parliament that the ministry was improving the mobility of circuit supervisors with the supply of motorbikes, as well as strengthening the capacity of the district directorates by providing them with vehicles to carry out school monitoring and inspection.
The question we ask is: If all these are being done, why set up another independent body to perform the same function of inspecting and monitoring schools?
We recall with a lot of nostalgia the era when school inspectors visited schools unannounced to check on both teaching and administration. Even at that time, the inspectors had their own vehicles which made them very mobile.
That was then. Now, in spite of the good roads we have and the advancement in technology, supervisors complain of lack of vehicles and other logistics to carry out their basic duties.
The time has come for us, as a country, to keep systems which helped us in the past running, so that those systems can continue to serve the nation. It is good to have institutions, but those institutions run on systems and so any systemic failure is bound to cripple the institutions.
The greatest stakeholder in education, the teacher, also needs to be factored into the equation if our aim is to raise standards at the basic school level.
It is common knowledge that in our communities teachers are no longer given the respect they were given in times past. They are treated, instead, with contempt by both pupils and parents. While we don’t think teachers are angels, we are of the belief that if the trend is reversed, we would have surmounted a great hurdle.
The DAILY GRAPHIC thinks it is high time teachers were accorded all the respect they more than deserve, so that they can give of their best.
Then, and only then, will they deliver on their mandate to raise the standard of education at the basic level.
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