A professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) has described the Education Minister’s initiative of affiliating grade C schools with A as a lazy planner’s approach to resolving quality issues.

Prof. George Kwaku Toku Oduro told JoyNews that such an association would not help much, but instead, paying attention to the basic schools and providing more support to the grade C ones should do the trick.

The former UCC Pro Vice-Chancellor believes the fundamental issues that ought to be tackled to address the issues of quality at the grace C schools have been ignored and should be the Minister’s focus.

The Education Minister, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, after a consultative meeting in Kumasi with the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS), revealed it was introducing a policy to associate all lower-performing senior high schools with grade A schools.

The initiative, he explained, is to imbibe the principles of the grade A schools into the grade C schools to improve their academic performance.

But the professor of education leadership disagrees.

“When I read the story, I found it very difficult to believe that this was coming from the Education Minister because we all know why senior high schools (SHS) have been categorised.

"We know that the key issues are not that the teachers in Grade C schools do not qualify and that teachers in grade C schools do not know what to do,” he stated.

He said there are practical issues, issues relating to laboratories in grade C schools, which are not well-equipped; matters relating to grants for teachers; issues relating to teaching logistics; and so many other things that hinge on quality.

“So, how can grade C schools affiliated with grade A schools be a model for addressing quality issues in grade C schools?" he quizzed.

Prof. George Kwaku Toku Oduro believes rural schools or grade C schools also need quality and require planning.

According to him, for the past six years, if government had planned very well, heeded the call on the ministry not to haste in implementing the across-the-board Free SHS, and targeted grade C schools in addressing issues of lab equipment, library matters, issues of classroom furniture and all of that, about 10 schools would have been leveraged to the point of grade A schools.

The former Pro-Vice Chancellor of UCC further suggested that the neglect of the basic schools whose products the senior high schools rely on accounts for the low performance at the grade A schools and wants the basic schools, the foundation of Ghana’s education system, to be tackled and all other things would fall in line.

“I think the minister should adopt a more pragmatic approach in addressing issues about Grade C schools."

"I do not think his model is something that we should embrace...it gives an indication of a lazy planners’ model for addressing issues,” he stated.