Ranking Member on Parliament’s Education Committee, Peter Nortsu-Kotoe, has blamed the introduction of distance programmes in colleges of education for the mass failure in the teachers licensure examination.

According to him, the distance programme particularly those for mature students have opened the floodgates for persons even with the most deplorable WASSCE results to earn a place at the colleges of education.

This he says is partly to be blamed for the mass failures at the colleges of education.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile, Peter Nortsu-Kotoe said it was time for the Ministry of Education to rethink the admission processes of colleges of education in the country.

“Entry requirements to colleges of education as the registrar said, yes the minimum is 36, that is C6 in all the six subjects and you’re good to go. But when you go to distance programmes there is one entry requirement they call mature students, that is where the problem is.

“So you can get the E8 all along and once you’re 25 years you qualify to do the programme and they are the ones creating the problems in the service. So they’re mature students, but the years for you to be a mature student I think it’s about 35, 40 but they’ve brought it down to 25. So when they go there they’re not able to do well,” he said.

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He further called for a total scrap of the distance programmes.

According to him, the education of future leaders should not be placed into the hands of persons who do not go through the colleges of education full time.

He expressed concern that most of the educators being graduated from these colleges may have not fulfilled the required credit hours as a result of the distance learning programme.

“We also have a problem with this distance programme, you see, you go to the nursing programme I don’t think they run any distance programme or sandwich. No, you go to the college of nursing and you’re trained as a nurse because you’re coming to deal with human life.

“So if we’re to teach and you want us to do the course by distance, no, we have been telling the minister that the ministry must do something about it because there is a mass production of teachers.

“ So they’re producing teachers on mass basis and they’re unable to pass the examination because I don’t even see the credit hours that they even earn, whether they earn it genuinely, I don’t know. So there’s the need for the Ministry of Education and GTEC to sit up,” he said.