[ 2017-03-28 ]

Professor Kwesi Yankah, Minister of State-designate in charge of Tertiary Education

4-year SHS students better than 3-year counterparts - Prof Yankah
The Minister of State-designate in charge of
Tertiary Education, Professor Kwesi Yankah, has
defended the four-year Senior High School
curriculum saying that students who went through
that system performed better than their
counterparts who went through the three year
course system.

He, however, proposed a window to be opened for
well-endowed schools that could complete the three
year system with the hope of posting good
performance without restrictions.

Prof Yankah shared his views on the matter when he
appeared before the Appointments Committee of
Parliament on Monday.

Answering questions on a wide range of issues, he
described the complaints that private universities
were much more expensive that public ones as a
myth noting that the gap between public and
private universities was narrowing.

Prof. Yankah, who is currently the Vice-Chancellor
of the Central University College, spoke about the
fact that many universities had evolved leaving
their core mandate behind.

He submitted that tertiary institutions had moved
away from their original courses and programmes
and cited the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science
programmes and Technology (KNUST) as one such
institution running many non-science programmes
that did not encourage the younger universities to
cut a niche for their own programmes.

Culture of reading

Touching on the need to improve reading culture of
reading among school children, Prof Yankah
underscored the need for parents to read to their
children to sleep to imbibe in them a good reading
culture.

According to the university don, two per cent of
primary school children could hardly read and
write English and any other Ghanaian language and
called for enough reading text books to be
supplied to schools, especially the deprived ones
to help change the situation.

He touched on the need to take a second look at
the manner internship programmes for students were
done and asked students to move away from the
stereotype of the fixation of doing their
internship at the prestigious companies.

GETFund support

Prof. Yankah called for equity in terms of
disbursing funds from the Ghana Education Trust
Fund (GETFund) for both private and public
tertiary institutions Equity for tertiary
institutions.

“We don’t need to delude ourselves that
GETfund is for public universities but for all
private and public institutions to benefit. We
ought to fight to clearly understand the GETFund
law for people to understand,” he added.

Asked whether he supported the compulsory
retirement of 60 years involving teachers and
lecturers who still had the drive to impact
knowledge, Prof Yankah indicated that there was a
youth bulge out there who needed to be mentored to
take up the mantle of leadership after
retirement.

He retired lecturers could still take up positions
at the private tertiary institutions and lecture.

When asked how he was going to manage the teacher
unions, Prof Yankah said he would bring his
negotiations skills to bear on the job to win
their support and cooperation.

Minister of State for Agriculture

The Minister of State-designate for the Ministry
of Food and Agriculture, Dr Gyiele Nurah who took
his turn said he was going to support the
substantive minister by way of monitoring and
evaluating programmes to boost the food needs of
the country.

He mentioned the need for support life skill
irrigation development and expressed concern that
most of the public facilities in the northern part
of the country such as dams had broken down and
promised to advise minister to restructure the
management of irrigation dams in Ghana.

“All broken dams must be repaired and
serviceable. We also need to develop surface water
abstraction and develop dug outs and utilise
rivers by pumping water from the rivers to supply
villages with the water,” Dr Nurah added.

Talking about improving the efficient use of
water, the nominee said there were plans to
introduce sprinkler irrigation where irrigation
was possible throughout the country to guarantee
all year round irrigation for farmers.

On ensuring guarantee prices for food production,
the minister of state designate mentioned
commodity exchange where the farmer would be
compelled to sell immediately after harvest and
also have farmers deposit their produce at
designated places to guarantee price
stabilisation.

Deputy Interior Minister-designate

The last to appear before the committee was the
Deputy Minister-designate for the Interior, Mr
Henry Quartey, who condemned the violent behaviour
some vigilante groups causing mayhem in the
country.

He said he would support his minister to deal with
such groups and gave the assurance to depoliticise
the police service.

Mr Quartey who is also the MP for Ayawaso Central
was asked what he would do to ensure that
personnel in the security agencies who have not
been promoted after furthering their education, he
pointed out that the minister was currently in
discussion to see how best those officers on their
own who studied without permission from the
security agencies were given a leverage.

The deputy minister-designate expressed his
commitment to partner the minister to reform the
country’s prisons.

Source - Graphic.com.gh

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