Somewhere in August 2012, the Ministry of Education warned that tertiary institutions that do not follow the applicable entry requirements to admit students will have their accreditation revoked. Consequently, the ministry directed the National Accreditation Board (NAB) to publicize, in consonance with the Tertiary Education Accreditation and Establishment Regulations (LI 1984, 2010), the applicable entry requirements to all tertiary education institutions in the country.
Amongst these regulations were that candidates with grades D7 and E8 should not be admitted into any of the country's tertiary institutions, be it public or private. The order followed an audit inspection conducted by the board at the university which found out that some of the students who were at various levels were admitted with only proficiency certificates in Computer Studies and other courses. NAB, thus ordered some private universities to withdraw almost 4000 students. Some of these students did not actually enter these universities with proficiency in computer science but had either D7 or E8 in one core subject or one elective subject.
Three categories of such students were identified. These are Higher National Diploma (HND) students without the requisite passes in the core SSCE/WASSCE subjects, especially English and Mathematics; mature students and others with qualifications not recognized for purposes of admission to the nation’s tertiary education system. These students took the matter to the court and won. The court however directed those universities to help organize remedial classes for such students to help them make those grades and also to organize classes for the affected students to catch up with their peers. End result was total waste of time and scarce resources. The question is why must candidates with D7 and E8 be prevented from accessing tertiary education when WAEC recognizes those grades as passes?
Another academic year is here, and the statistics from the country's polytechnics is heartbreaking. Out of a total of 19,645 applicants, only about 5,762 representing (29.30%) qualified for admission into the countries ten polytechnics just because the cut off points are D7 and E8.
This means that almost 14,000 have been plunged out and thus cannot access tertiary education. This is for the polytechnic category alone. The statistics for the private universities is not yet known - perhaps that is worse.
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