he Presidential candidate of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Mr Hassan Ayariga, says a PNC government will create world class universities across the country when it assumes power.
In addition, Mr Hassan Ayariga said, his government would develop comprehensive technical and vocational institutions of education for school dropouts and also institute policies to enable students to be more creative and innovative in their studies.
Mr Ayariga said this at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) Evening Encounter for presidential candidates of political parties with representation in Parliament.
“Our government will ensure that tertiary institutions accessing public funding offer priority programmes for national development and also reform the polytechnics to focus on technical and industry based programmes and not to compete with the universities for social science programmes,” he said.
He said under a compulsory free education system, the PNC administration would decentralise the management of the capitation grant to basic schools in the various districts, adding that the government would ensure that the grant reached them before the beginning of each term.
Mr Ayariga said a system would be set up to evaluate the impact of the capitation grant, the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP), free textbooks, exercise books and school uniforms for easy access to quality basic education.
Adequate attention, he said, would be paid to technical and vocational training programmes across the country to train and prepare more youth for the practical world.
“The intention is to help the youth create jobs rather than cry for jobs, and to de-emphasise the minds of people from concentrating on white collar jobs rather than acting practically to create jobs out of their professions.
“This policy by the PNC will certainly help in producing more professionals rather than graduates who would put pressure on central government for non-existing jobs,” he said.
Mr Ayariga said a PNC government would promote specialisation in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the colleges of education and resource centres in each circuit centre at the basic level.
In collaboration with the disability council, all the people of Ghana shall have the right to information, education and the skills to improve their human and technical capabilities so that they would create jobs and also be capable of accessing gainful employment.
“We will review the Information and Communication Technology policy in education to mainstream disability issues and implement accordingly. We are still facing key policy issues of lack of transparancy and inequity in the management and allocation of the capitation grant,” he said.
Mr Ayariga said a PNC administration would review the curricula of education from the basic to the tertiary level which would include schools syllabi with the view to providing quality education to Ghanaians.
He said his government would put measures in place to improve teacher willingness to impart knowledge to students as well as allocate funding and create the mechanism to give salary top-ups and accommodation facilities to teachers who work in deprived areas.
“This mechanism would include an evaluation component that will demonstrate whether or not the additional funds result in improved teacher/student ratio and in better examination results,” he said.
