A group of professors and academicians poring over the future of Ghana's education have suggested that the country works towards a stage where only persons with post graduate certificates will be allowed to teach at the primary level. To achieve that, the group says government should abandon its decision to build more teacher training colleges and rather focus on improving the quality of the existing ones. The group of educators - the Education Forum - even though acknowledged the efforts being made by the government to improve the situation, they indicated that the current system of education leaves much to be desired. The group have since February this year been meeting every fortnight to discuss ways to better Ghana's education system - at all levels. They are working under the auspices of IMANI Ghana with collaboration from other private and public stakeholders. 38 colleges; 28,000 students Dissecting the country's Colleges of Education, formerly Teacher Training College, on Joy FM's Super Morning Show Friday, it was established that there are 38 of such colleges with a population of 28,000 students. The total figure is said to be about the same as one public university. The ruling National Democratic Congress promised in its manifesto to construct 200 Senior High Schools, 10 Colleges of Education and one Public University in the Eastern Region. President John Mahama therefore appointed 'three wise men' - E. T. Mensah, Alban Bagbin and Cletus Avoka - to coordinate the implementation of the projects and other Presidential priority projects. But the group of highly respected academicians are calling on the government to abandon plans to build more training colleges and suggest expansion of existing facilities. They proposed that a more viable solution to the problem would be upgrading the existing teacher training colleges. Cost effective Former Rector of GIMPA, Professor Steven Adei said the idea is "splendid but the method is not the best", he believes the existing teacher training colleges must be equipped and their facilities expanded. "Of the 38 colleges the average intake is 400, which can easily be expanded to 800. That means you can double the teacher training immediately without any major infrastructural, administrative overhead which is more cost effective." He also noted that there is a problem with the quality of colleges and wanted the government to rather improve their quality. Dissipate funds Retired diplomat K.B Asante added that the move by government to build more training colleges will be a wrong decision. He explained: "We believe this is not the right thing to do because it involves money and we need a lot of resources for education...yes teacher training is important but we believe that just establishing more teacher training colleges will not solve the problem, in fact it will dissipate funds into unnecessary areas."