The Ministry of Education has revealed that it is introducing a policy to associate all lower performing senior high schools to grade “A” schools.

Sector Minister, Dr. Yaw Adutwum, says the initiative is to imbibe the principles of the grade ‘A’ schools into the grade “C” schools to improve their academic performance.

“Invariably, when we are opening new schools, we don’t look at how we can partner the new schools with existing high performing schools. 

“For instance, you may have T.I. Ahmadiyya school in other towns across the country, but we all know the one with distinction is what is located in Kumasi. 

“But we can pair these schools up so that they learn from the best practices of the Kumasi one and in no time the lower performing ones will learn from them,” he said. 

Officials of the Ministry of Education and the Free Senior High School Secretariat have been meeting with the heads of some category “A” senior high schools across the country.

The stakeholder consultative meeting was to assess the performance of students and also deliberate on ways to address some challenges affecting the Free Senior High School Programme.

Dr. Adutwum said that indoctrinating the principles of the grade ‘A’ schools in the underperforming schools would transform Ghana’s secondary education system.

“We’ve not been doing that proactively. Now, we are going to do that. So that we will have more high performing schools in Ghana,” he said. 

The sector Minister also assured to expedite actions to resolve some challenges confronting these schools.

“A few of the schools do not have buses and pick-ups, we are going to ensure they get the same opportunities just as the other schools. 

“We discussed some ways to minimize these challenges and how to optimize the opportunities given by the President, so that we can be at the forefront of the education transformation agenda,” he said. 

Meanwhile, the government has released some funds to address financial and other infrastructural challenges.

“A Cheque was issued last week to come to our level. The Minister has assured us that another Cheque will be issued in the next two weeks to address the challenges we have at the school level,” President of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS), Alhaji Yakub A.B. Abubakar, said.