The Ministry of Education has tasked the National Accreditation Board (NAB) to close down any identified unaccredited tertiary institution operating in the country. A Deputy Minister of Education, Dr Joseph Annan, who gave the directive, said it was unacceptable for such institutions to operate. He was speaking at a two-day programme in which agencies under the Ministry of Education presented their 2009 annual performance reports to the ministry in Accra. The Executive Secretary of the NAB, Mr Kwame Dattey, who presented the report of the board, said by next week the board would publish the names of all accredited public and private tertiary institutions in the media. "Accreditation is a system of according recognition to and monitoring an educational institution for meeting satisfactory standards in performance, integrity and quality," he said. "Section 24 of Act 744 provides that any person who operates an unaccredited institution, runs an unaccredited programme, advertises an unaccredited institution or programme or fails to register a foreign institution commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than three hundred penalty units or to a term of imprisonment of not more than two years or both," he added. Mr Dattey said for any tertiary institution to be able to perform its core functions, it must have, among others, well-qualified staff in adequate numbers, a well-equipped and well-stocked library, an adequate number of classrooms, lecture theatres, laboratories and work-shops with the requisite equipment, as well as adequate and reliable sources of funding. Simply put, he said, the institution must have the physical, material, financial and human resources for the delivery of quality so that students in possession of the requisite entry qualifications had a reasonable chance of entering and passing the stipulated examinations at the end of their studies. Mr Dattey said the board determined the equivalencies of both local and foreign qualifications, guided the nation's effort to expand access to tertiary education and ensured that quality was not sacrificed. The Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, who opened the meeting, charged the participants to critically look at the issues put out by the agencies to bring about improvement in the educational. Source: Daily Graphic