Top SHSs Don’t Admit Enough Public JHS Students – C/R Minister

The Central Regional Minister, Kwamena Duncan, has registered his disappointment in how highly rated Senior High Schools in the Central Region do not admit public Junior High School leavers who are from the Region.

He has lamented the trend is a threat to the human resource development of the Region because, in his words, “the root which will replace us is virtually dying out”.

The Minister has linked the trend to the low performance of Junior High School (JHS) students in the Region, a situation he believes has prevented most JHS leavers from meeting the admission requirements of the top schools that are mostly based in the Cape Coast area.

The Regional Minister expressed the worry yesterday at a media soiree held at the Central Regional Coordinating Council to elaborate on the successes and challenges in 2017 and the programmes for 2018.

Answering a question on the level of education in the Region noted for first-class senior high schools and tertiary institutions, he noted that though the region boasts of numerous educational facilities, the children in it are mostly far away from benefiting adequately from them.

“The statistics of our young people, whether they are getting to our schools or not – and the statistics are quite grim, grim statistics”, the Minister announced.

Citing examples to back his worries, Kwamena Duncan revealed, “2014/15, 2015/16 (academic years), for Holy Child School, not a single girl from all the public schools in the Region got admitted there, not one”.

He continued, “The story is not any different from Wesley Girls, from the Mfantsipims, from the Adisadels”.

He has therefore made a clarion call on all stakeholders in the Region to combine forces to ensure better academic performance at the basic levels of public schools in order to help get more children from the Region into the first class schools the Region boasts of.

As a measure to tackle the situation, the Regional Minister has announced that, as part of his overall strategy to improve education in Central Region, he will have a meeting of all Junior High School heads as well as leaders of Junior High School Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA) at the Regional Coordinating Council in 2018 to discuss basic education challenges in the Region.

Source: Citifmonline