UG to reduce intake by 20%

The authorities at the country’s premier university, University of Ghana (UG), are planning to reduce this year’s admission into the university by 20%.

Prof. Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi, Director of the Institute of Adult Education of UG, who disclosed this on Tuesday, said with respect to the intended reduction in the school’s intake, it has been proposed that the cut-off point should be pegged at aggregate 13 or better.

He was speaking at this year’s durbar of the Global Action Week in Accra organised by Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition where he presented research findings conducted by the Institute of Adult Education on the topic: “The Relevance of Literacy to National Development: A Case of Neglect for Youth and Adult Literacy in Ghana”.

“The university is cutting down 20%, and let me tell you something else, the cut-off point, we are being told is going to be 13; but the government says everybody with up to 24 qualifies for tertiary education.

“So what are we going to do with somebody with (aggregate) 14 or 15? It is a nightmare; now that the desires are there, the resources are not there to be able to absorb them.” Prof. Oheneba-Sakyi explained, notwithstanding the toll it would have on prospective students and the national drive to increase accessibility to higher institutions, the measures by the university would improve teacher-students ratio of the school.

If those measures are implemented this year, he stated, only a maximum of about 5000 students would be admitted into University of Ghana, out of the over 13000 applicants. “But these are long programming process for the government to come in and put something in place as a national policy which would not change with change of government. That is what we all need as a country.”

However, Prof. Oheneba-Sakyi said the decision would not affect certain categories of applicants, including persons with disabilities and those on protocol list. The quota for students from deprived schools would also be maintained as well as the female affirmative action.

Prof. Oheneba-Sakyi told Myjoyonline that it is likely the decision might also affect those who applied for the long distance education. In a speech read on his behalf, Mr. Bright Appiah, National Chairman of GNECC, said the Global Action Week, has over the years improved school enrolment worldwide. About 27 million are currently in school, he said.

He said in Ghana, the Capitation Grant in addition to the School Feeding Programme has increased school enrolment at the basic level. However, Mr Appiah noted that the increment was not achieved without some challenges to the education sector. He mentioned the lack of physical infrastructure, teaching and learning materials and inadequate teachers as some of the challenges. He called on the Ministry of Education to increase the budgetary allocation to literacy education to 3% from the current 1.4%.

Global Action Week 2009 is being observed in Ghana from 20th -25th April. It is under the theme: “Youth and Adult Literacy and Lifelong Learning”.  The Week is used to pressurize government to place literacy policies at the centre of education systems and development efforts and create awareness on the need for families to imbibe the act of reading and writing in their domestic environments.


Story by Isaac Essel/Myjoyonline.com