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Shift System to be Abolished

DAILY GRAPHIC - 3/1/2010 Read: 943 times

The Ministry of Education has developed a scheme through which it will phase out the shift system in basic schools in the country.

Under the scheme, the system will be abolished from year to year in schools that had been identified to be running such systems across the country.

"We are going to eradicate the system through a gradual process of providing infrastructure to cater for all pupils for the morning session only," the Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, said in an interview with the Daily Graphic.

He said the process of abolishing the system would begin as soon as funds were available to undertake the exercise of providing extra classrooms.

According to him, the system was not good and made children become truant among engaging in other anti-social activities, adding that "we are determined to abolish the system".

Mr Tettey-Enyo said once funds were available, contracts would be awarded for the construction and expansion of classrooms to accommodate all pupils in existing schools.

He said the shift system was mostly found in the urban centres, where there were large populations of pupils and inadequate school infrastructure at the basic level.

Areas he mentioned included Accra, Kumasi and Koforidua, and that new structures would be built in schools that required more classrooms.

The shift system is normally operated at the basic school level where the number of pupils in a particular school was divided into two with one group having classes in the morning and the other group in the afternoon.

The reason has to do with inadequate classroom facilities to accommodate the large number of pupils at a time for only one session in the morning.

Mr Tettey-Enyo also stated that 15,000 youth were to be recruited as teaching assistants under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) to be deployed at the basic educational level.

The recruits, he said, would be generally involved in teaching in pre-schools and basic schools in the country to ease the pressure on teachers working with the Ghana Education Service (GES).

Currently, there are about 23,200 teaching assistants at post in the rural areas.

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AM A) recently launched an education endowment fund to raise GH¢6 million from corporate institutions and individuals to build more classrooms and procure school furniture as part of efforts to abolish the shift system.