An Education Think Tank has described it as ridiculous and misleading, a claim by the Vice President, Dr Bawumia that 80% of Senior High Schools in the country have benefited from a government of Ghana’s Free Wi-Fi Installation Project.
According to the Think Tank, Educational Workers Connect, it is a public knowledge that the total number of Senior High Schools in Ghana is 721.
“Therefore, what this strange assertion by our Vice President means is that 80% of the 721 will give us close to 577 schools.” They said.
“As an Educational Think Tank interested in promoting quality education in our country, we find the claim by our Veep as shocking and troubling knowing full well the state of internet connectivity in many of our secondary schools. So in order to either corroborate or deny the story based on empirical and verifiable evidence, we set out to investigate this claim.” They said.
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Findings
According to the Think Tank, their findings, after contacting their unimpeachable sources across the various senior high schools in the country, indicated unambiguously that, the claim by the Vice president was untrue, misleading and unfortunate.
“Our checks reveal that the few schools that are connected to the Free WiFi were provided by their PTAs.”
“What the government has provided in some of the schools across the country, according to our independent checks are less than half of the 80% that our Vice president claimed.” They alleged.
“In fact, to further buttress our stance, we took a look at the government’s own manifesto which was recently launched. In there, under education, they stated emphatically that they have awarded a contract to provide free WiFi connectivity to all 722 SHSs, 46 Colleges of Education, 16 Regional Offices and 260 District Education Offices.
So it is shocking to hear from the Vice just a few weeks after the launch claiming that 80% of the Senior High Schools are connected to the free WiFi. This is indeed misleading and unfortunate, coming from our Vice president.” They argued.
Technology in Schools
Educational Workers Connect applauded the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for placing priority on the use of technology in schools in their respective 2020 manifestos.
“As an Educational Think Tank interested in promoting quality education in the country, we are extremely gladdened to observe how much priorities both major political parties ie NDC and the NPP have placed on Technology in our educational set up having read their manifestos.”
“We believe strongly that this is the way to go if we are indeed committed to rubbing shoulders with the outside world as far as education is concerned.” They said.
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Speaking Truth to Facts
The Think Tank thereby called on the political parties to desist from making statements that are not factual in relation to matters of Educational Interest.
“However, what we will not accept is to allow our leaders to continuously pontificate about things they have not done with the view to either achieving cheap political points or to deliberately distort the facts just to mislead Ghanaians.”
“This attitude must cease forthwith. Because if we leave this unacceptable posture by our leaders unchecked, it portends grave danger to our fledgeling democracy and more importantly our education. And this must not be countenanced.” They said.
They call on the Vice President to be fair to facts, reminding him of some of his false utterances including the payment of the infamous legacy Arrears of Teachers which tends out to be false.
“This is the more reason we respectfully urge our Veep to try as much as possible to be fair to the facts. We recall his recent outburst claiming that, the infamous legacy arrears legitimately owed teachers were cleared.”
“This claim we all know have been ferociously and violently debunked by our Think tank with incontrovertible evidence and supported also by the teachers across the country with documented evidence.”
“This eventually pushed many of them to a few days ago threatened to go on demonstration but ended up petitioning the Director-General of GES.”They lamented.
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Publish Schools with WiFi
The Educational Think Tank said Government should publish the list of the supposed 80% of Senior High Schools with WiFi Installation from Government.
“However, if our Vice president still stands by his claim which we are certain in our minds is false, we respectfully call on him to publish the names of all the Senior High Schools connected to the free WiFi.” They said.
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“Ghanaians deserve to know in order for them to also do an independent verification of his claim and do rebuttal or praise the government if indeed his claim is true.”
“After all one of the tenets of democracy is transparency. We do not think this is too much a humble demand to make of our Veep and his staff.”
“We end our release by once again stating emphatically that the claim of government installing 80% of free WiFi in the secondary schools according to the Vice president is ridiculous and non-factual.” They concluded.
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Source: EducationGhana.net
