Education Ministry debunks reports of food shortage in schools

The Ministry of Education has refuted news publications claiming that some Senior High Schools (SHSs) will close down due to food shortages,

A press release signed by the spokesman of the Ministry, Kwasi Kwarteng, said adequate supplies of food items had been made to the schools in question.

The statement assured parents and guardians that all SHSs in the country had received adequate supplies of food items, stressing that the recent disruptions within the food supply chain had been addressed.

“The Ministry wishes to assure the public of its commitment and willingness in providing quality and timely supply of food to all Senior High Schools,” the statement added.

News items on alleged food shortages in some Senior High Schools had been making the rounds, purporting that those schools were at the verge of closure.

The news rolled on the back of some regional chairpersons of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) alleging that schools would be forced to close down if the government failed to supply food.

It said the Association would send students home until enough food and money were made available to the schools.

This had raised concerns among the public and stakeholders in the education sector, culminating in various discussions in the media

Graduate unemployment

Meanwhile, the Minister of education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has assured Ghanaians that the Ministry will tackle the issue of graduate unemployment head-on

The Education Minister gave the assurance during the fifth edition of the National Education Week 2022 in Accra. The programme was dubbed “Re-Assessing Educational Policies for Effective Service Delivery and National Transformation”.

The Minister charged universities to shun the syndrome of ‘garbage in, garbage out’, urging them to provide adequate training to the students to undertake duties in the modern society.

“The idea is that Senior High School system did not prepare them well; so when they came here, who could not have changed them… Universities must look at themselves as recycling plants when garbage comes in because it has a duty to churn out a recycled product of benefit to society,” he stressed.

Dr. Adutwum blamed graduate unemployment on the university education system for offering admissions to potential candidates to study Diploma in Education programme, for instance, without recourse to the job opportunities available.

“We cannot run away and hide from graduate unemployment …. When you invest in setting up campuses across the country, branch campuses and then run to offer a Diploma in Education programme, producing thousands and thousands of them every year, when there are no opportunities, do you blame the state education set for not hiring them?” he quizzed.

The education sector, he explained, has the responsibility of contributing to the desired national transformation by recognising the strengths and weaknesses of the current system, and prescribing strategies to address the challenges in order to give every Ghanaian child the opportunity to succeed and contribute to national development.

He underscored the need for strategic policies to be developed and re-assessed periodically for effective service delivery.

He further urged the stakeholders within the sector to delve deeper into the various government policies, programmes and projects within the sector in order to help shape them to achieve the expected outcome.