We the leadership of the Ghana National Union of Polytechnic Students (GNUPS) across the ten regions have gathered here to register our discontentment over the conscious marginalization and demeaning of Polytechnic education and the shameful situation of government’s inability to create and maintain the systems we need to run our education without pointless interruptions.
We have lost our enduring because government rather than working to improve education does little or no effort at all in addressing the challenges confronting education in Ghana. This premeditated dealing of the government championed by the Ministry of Education and its Agencies, has occasion this meeting and series of programs which from today would be put in place by GNUPS to ensure that our future is not ruin by government.
EDUCATION
Government with its recent policies is making tertiary education in Ghana very discouraging. One could predict that with the current attitude of government towards tertiary education, citizens may lose interest and passion for higher learning even before Ghana achieves the FCUBE. We are sure with the recent debate on making S.H.S education free, nobody wish second cycle education as the end point for students in Ghana.
ENTRY REQUIREMENTS FOR TERTIARY EDUCATION:
(1) APPLICANTS SEEKING HIGHER EDUCATION WITH GRADE D7 ARE DENIED ADMISSION.
We find it worrisome that a grade certified by the recognized body in charge of pre tertiary examinations and assessments (WAEC) as pass grade is being considered by another regulatory body as a basis for denying Ghanaian students access to higher education. By this unfriendly policy we have witnessed several instances whereby some students with overall aggregate of 15 are denied admission whereas their fellows with aggregate 24 are offered admissions by the dictates of the policy. Is equity not supposed to be a hallmark of a good policy?
Evidenced in some polytechnics, students applying to pursue practical and skilled oriented programmes like Fashion Design and furniture technology are denied admission because they have D7 in English language though they have better passes in other subjects. How does this policy safeguard the right to education of such Ghanaians?
Admission requirements are basically aimed at ensuring that students are ready for tertiary-level work. We always disagree when these government agencies use it as a means of managing the limited spaces of tertiary institutions in Ghana. In any case Ghana has now grown beyond the era where there was no adequate space for students seeking tertiary education. What really occasioned the forbidding of some passes by our regulators? What study was conducted by government to arrive at the conclusion that students with such a pass (D7) do not perform on their academic work when admitted to read tertiary programs? We are ever ready to provide statistics to prove that such students in most cases are more successful than their colleagues who gained admission with better grades. We cannot imagine a policy in this 21st Century that prevents citizens from attaining higher learning with a certified pass grade especially where there is the availability of facilities to admit them for training. We still cannot understand why the government is comfortable seeing thousands of students resulting to streetism because they have a pass among their grades (even where training facilities are available). We raise this vital concern for redress and government tells the public through its Deputy Minister in charge of tertiary education that we seek this intervention because Polytechnics would turn white elephants if we allow the policy to stay. We want to categorically state that our concern and emphasis is on the students whose dream of tertiary education are shut unnecessarily by the Policy. In as much as all Ghanaians recognize and have always supported National Accreditation Board (NAB) and National Council for Tertiary Education(NCTE) in their works to ensure quality tertiary education, we believe all Ghanaian students who have managed to pass their entry exams (as determined by WAEC) must be allowed the opportunity to pursue higher education (subject to the availability of training facilities), Ghana must be ready to harness every single available human resource through education.
(2) POST DIPLOMA APPLICANTS MUST HAVE TWO YEARS WORKING EXPERIENCE BEFORE QUALIFIED TO DO TOP-UP FOR DEGREE
Rather than closing the polytechnics down and redirecting all to go to the limited public universities, the government under the watch of ministry of education have decided that post diploma applicants must have two years working experience before qualified to do top-up for degree. This policy directs that HND and Diploma graduates after their graduation are required to work for a minimum of two years before becoming eligible to enrol in top-up degree programmes.
This policy again lacks equity since it seeks to recognize HND and Diploma graduates with no job experience the same as S.H.S leavers. Are the regulators not aware that jobs in Ghana are hard to come by? An HND graduate practically in the face of the prevailing unemployment in Ghana has to find luck in either raising capital to start a business venture, operate for two years to get the needed working experience (subject to availability of capital) or voluntarily offer their service to existing companies and businesses (also subject to acceptance by business owners). Government cannot be left to TOY with the lives of Polytechnic Students. What confirms the unprogressive posture of government is the deputy minister in charge of tertiary education, Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa’s position that government was convinced to accept the policy because students use Polytechnics as a means of achieving their failed dreams of university education and government wanted to stop that. What a degrading reason for a policy? Is the government wishing HND as the terminal point for Polytechnic students? Why won’t students cross to universities when you do not allow the development of a clear line of progression within the polytechnics for them? We challenge the NAB and NCTE to come out and tell Ghanaians the number of Bachelor of Technology Programmes designed and submitted to them for accreditation by the Polytechnics. They are all lying on shelves, and you want to introduce a policy to bar HND graduates from pursuing higher learning through the universities? So now government by its wrong reason for this policy is telling the nation that it is usually ‘university-reject’ students who go to Polytechnics.
The deliberate attempt to portray Polytechnic Students as minority and academically inferior group in Ghana would have been ignored by GNUPS but for the fact that such mischief has the full tendency to create indelible impression which will be very misleading, we call on government officials and the public to desist from passing misleading comments about Polytechnic education.
WITHDRAWAL OF SUBSIDIES ON TERTIARY EDUCATION
We are saddened that inspite of the economic hardships and high cost of education in the country, Government has decided to withdraw subsidies and subventions to public tertiary institutions in the country. For us this directive is only not intended to outsource tertiary education to the well to do but to deny citizens their right to tertiary education. How can a social democratic government be so insensitive to its subjects? What government seems to be ignoring is the fact that even current bills on tertiary education is a threat to human resource training for national development. The withdrawal we believe will render our tertiary system more or less strictly ‘fee paying’ which we cannot afford.
GETFUND AND SLTF
We demand to know what is keeping the President from setting up the Getfund Board? What about Student Loan Trust Fund Board? What has become of the NDC’s campaign promise of Better Education?
NATIONAL RESEARCH FUND
We hold no disagreement with government for its intention of establishing a national research fund to promote developmental research. However, we vehemently oppose government’s policy of replacing the Book and Research allowance of our lecturers with the fund. As a public knowledge, government already is not doing too well with the management of statutory funds in the country and this diminishes our confidence in the smooth running of a research fund when established. The competitive nature of the fund as proposed by government would imply that not all lecturers can access the fund at a time and this defeats the concept of the book and research allowance which makes room for research to be conducted by every lecturer in every year for the benefit of students. The competitive nature again has the tendency of introducing the act of favouritism and discrimination. GNUPS is not convinced whether the allocations into the research fund will also not be in arrears for years if established (like some other funds on education), the effects of which will be on effective teaching and we the students become the sufferers.
The above notwithstanding, lecturers at the close of every academic year must be compelled to show proof of research conducted before they qualify to be paid the allowance for the following academic year. This we suggest can be done by the quality control division of the tertiary institutions and recommend lecturers for payments of the allowance.
POTAG STRIKE ACTIONS
Ladies and Gentlemen, today we have thousands of polytechnic students who cannot become graduates because their lecturers are striking over pay and working conditions for closely two weeks and all we hear from stakeholders is that the said strike action was illegal due to some purported ambiguity of a sort contained in notice for declaring the industrial action. For us as students who have fulfilled our part of the deed by paying fees and making ourselves available for training, the least we expected was government’s refusal to settle its indebtedness to our lecturers. We are not prepared to dabble in the legalities of the strike action. If you are a government and your employees embark on an illegal strike leaving students to suffer all losses, what are supposed to do? We are surprised that government was made aware from months ago on this strike and did nothing to prevent what it calls an illegal strike. Always government is only interested in protecting its name and not the citizens. Government has coiled back to relax after coming out to respond to the strike as illegal, leaving students to suffer the loss. Simple logic demands that an employer seeks the law to compel his employees to call of an illegal strike. Why is government not doing so if indeed the strike is illegal? To us we believe government has at its disposal all it needs to avert this loss on students.
We are through this media briefing issuing an ultimatum to government to resolve matters to get back Polytechnic education moving, we need our lecturers back within 48hours from today else we embark on a nationwide public procession to register our displeasure on Thursday, 29th May, 2014.
OUR DEMANDS
That our teachers be made to return to the lectures halls within forty eight hours of this conference. How to get them is not part of our reasoning.
That government folds its plan to stop subsidizing tertiary education. We simply cannot sit aloof for this to pass unnoticed.
As matter of urgency, government must put together the GetFund and SLTF boards with the speed of light.
The poor entry requirements to tertiary education must be revised.
The government over these few years is by deeds, policies and programs exterminating the smooth running of education and WE SAY NO TO THAT. WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH AND ENOUGH IS TRULY ENOUGH.
For us we have resolved to actively participate in the battle for the soul of Polytechnic Education in Ghana. This conference is only the first step in a series of many geared steps towards creating the conditions for a Polytechnic Education that will no longer be marginalized. We wish to invite the press and the general public to join us in solidarity as we hit the streets on Thursday.
It’s time to recover our stolen dreams and doing so we must as a nation bear in mind that successful societies are constructed through the continuous social pressure put on the leadership by a citizenry disposed to holding their leaders accountable. The choice is clear, it is either we emancipate ourselves from the veneration of mediocrity, and put our leaders under enormous pressure to fulfil our aspirations for economic, social and infrastructural development or continue with mediocrity and be consumed by the social violence of a failed dysfunctional nation.
LONG LIVE GHANA
LONG LIVE GNUPS
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