Deputy Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum says his Ministry has begun the process of replacing mono desks with circular ones to promote better learning.

The new seating arrangement of pupils around circular tables instead of mono desks, which is being introduced at the Kindergarten level, is part of reforms being implemented in the education sector, Dr. Osei Adutwum stated on Joy FM, Thursday.

According to him, the use of mono desks is outdated and has become an impediment to modern day education because “that is not how 21st-century learning takes place”.

“When they sit in circles they are getting so many benefits because now they are looking at how do we collaborate [and] how do we work together?

The Deputy Minister said the Ministry is determined to reform the sector, starting from the public pre-schools being put up by the government to make children get the right education to acquire the needed skills for life.

Pre-school education challenge

Joy News’ campaign to promote early childhood education christened ‘Enroll me now’ highlights a significant number of children attend school late, according to the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS).

This begins in pre-school, as noted by the approximately 723,000 children in the 2014 GDHS who are primary school-age but are enrolled in preschool. 

And then there is the large group of currently enrolled students in Primary and Junior High School who are two or more years older than the target age for their grade. These children are at risk of leaving the education system later on before completing the primary or JHS cycle.

To correct this, the government through a partnership with UNICEF, plans to build 72 pre-schools to enable children start school at the right age. Currently, 22 of such pre-schools have been completed, Dr. Adutwum disclosed.

Government pre-school commissioned at Agona Nyakrom

One has been commissioned in Agona Nyakrom in the Central Region while another is expected to be commissioned next week at Bosomtwe in the Ashanti Region and this is where the reforms are beginning.

“So you are not going to see the mono desks, you are going to see situations where kids are seated differently, so we can begin to build on those 21^st century teaching and learning practices of students working together and teachers as facilitators of learning and not the dispensers of knowledge,” Dr. Adutwum added.

He said the Ministry will then replicate the spacing policy at the Primary and Junior High School levels in the course of time.

“That is an area where we really going to focus at the Ministry of Education, [if] we have good places for the kids to study then we have to change our teaching and learning practices,” he pointed.

Curricular reforms

Meanwhile, the Deputy Minister said some reforms in the school curricula, particularly those for KG to Primary 3, have already been done and are being rolled out this 2018/2019 calendar year. “The curriculum is not just about the child being in school but the messages they are given,” he stressed.

Beginning this October, all colleges of education are going to offer four years of bachelor of education degree programmes with which students would have a year to offer teaching practice.

A number of the colleges will also specialise in training people in early childhood education.

Dr. Adutwum is flanked in the studio by Madis Adamu Issa (left) and Emmanuel Afful

Education specialist with UNICEF, Madis Adamu-Issah, who was also on the show stressed the importance of giving teachers the training they require so that they can offer the proper training of the child.

“Children from ages 2, 4 and 5, their brains are almost comparable to the sponge...If a child misses out on that stage of education it catches up with them later in life,” Madis stated, citing the critical role of the teacher in delivering quality education.

This position is shared by English Language tutor, Emmanuel Afful, who said he was compelled to quit teaching in the public sector and go to the private sector because the system of the former does not support innovation.

“Currently we have a lot of people who are teaching not because they want to be teachers but because they don’t have their dream jobs; those people are people we should be addressing,” Afful said.

Watch the discussion below