Ghana: ‘Review Policy on Mobile Phone Ban in Schools’

Minister of Education, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh

Accra, February 8, 2018//-An ICT Teacher at the Saint Maurice Roman Catholic Junior High School (JHS), La in Accra, Madam Joyce Yeboah Amponsah has appealed to the Ghana Education Service (GES) to review its policy on mobile phone usage ban in the country’s second-cycle schools.

According to her, if the ban is lifted it will go a long way to improve the performance of students in the  West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). It is the academic school-leaving qualification awarded upon successful completion of the Senior High School exams.

The WASSCE is administered by the West African Examinations Council. It is only offered to candidates residing in Anglophone West African countries including Ghana and Nigeria. The WASSCE certificate enables the student(s) to gain admission into tertiary schools.

Speaking to African Eye Report in Accra at the sideline of a forum to mark this year’s Safer Internet Day (SID 2018), Madam Amponsah disclosed: “Students use or have access to mobile phones do well in the WASSCE”.

The same group of students also show great interest in the study of the ICT subject, she added.

Madam Amponsah further revealed: “The questions on the ICT subject for the WASSCE are always not on what we taught the students in the schools. But it is rather always on mobile phone and computer features”.

A renowned educationist and Founder of Gifted and Talented Education (GATE), Anis Haffar, shared the same views on the review of the policy on the mobile phone ban expressed by Madam Amponsah.

He sees the ban as a backward tendency for students to be restricted from using smartphones in a world that is dominated by technology.

There is the urgent need for holistic structures to be put in place by policy makers in education to allow mobile phones to be efficiently used by students.

“Under no circumstance must we deny young people access to smartphones because it can provide more information for students than any teacher can. I taught in California as far back as 1984 and students were allowed to use mobile phones. We cannot deny young people access to this technology in the 21st century.

But Ghana Education Service policy does not permit students in second-cycle schools to use mobile phone whiles on campus.

African Eye Report

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