Government must consider converting “Grade A” Senior High Schools into tertiary institutions – Lawyer advocates

Legal practitioner and a journalist with the Despite Media Group, Lawyer Tweneboah Koduah has recommended to the government to consider converting  “Grade A” Senior High Schools into tertiary institutions.

According to the lawyer, considering the government’s Free Senior High School Programme which has significantly increased SHS intake, it is projected that with the current capacities of the nation’s public universities it is virtually impossible to absorb all of these graduating SHS students into the existing universities.

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Minister for State In-Charge of Tertiary Education, Professor Kojo Yankah had earlier revealed at a forum that universities in the country will have to deal with an extra 45,000 SHS graduates due to the Free SHS Policy.

Proposing some measures on how the government can deal with this gap, the journalist opined that since the major problem has to do with the capacities of the universities in terms of infrastructure, the government must consider the conversion of the “Grade A” senior high schools into tertiary institutions.

To him, some of these schools are well-positioned as far as facilities and infrastructure are concerned and can best serve as a university if proper transitional mechanisms are put in place. He therefore expressed his hope that if this proposal is implemented, the country will reap enormous benefits in terms of human resource.

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Against this backdrop, he called for the need for the government to vigorously pursue the Community-Day SHS so that students will not have to travel long distance in order to access senior high school education.

“Personally I think the Community-Day Schools should be pursued vigorously. Secondary schools should not be far away from students. We must make it part of the primary and JHS system so that even if you have a cluster of schools you can complete secondary schools at where you started the basic school. There is no need for somebody to pick his/her luggage from Wa to attend senior high school at PRESEC. If we have enough schools there which can accommodate all the people there, you would not need to travel,” Lawyer Tweneboah Koduah opined.

He added that “in my view, some of these schools should be converted into tertiary institutions. They already have the facilities there. We must also expand the [existing] tertiary institutions so that there won’t be a case of shortage of space. For instance, PRESEC can become a university. When we give ourselves a period of 30 years, we will see the quality of people we will produce.”