Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum and Prof Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang
• The Minister of Education has reacted to some claims by Prof Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang
• Prof Opoku-Agyemang claims the students cheated in their final exams
• Dr Adutwum said her comments may have consequences on the students
Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, the Minister for Education has advised the running mate of John Dramani Mahama in the 2020 elections, Prof Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, to measure her words wisely whenever she is talking about the Free SHS and its implementation.
According to him, politicians are their own enemies and for Prof Opoku-Agyemang to have said students passed their WASSCE because they cheated.
He indicated that the students were the most courageous group of people to have write the exams in the midst of COVID-19.
Prof Opoku-Agyemang in an interview with Woezor TV questioned why Ghanaians are celebrating the outstanding performance of the SHS students in the 2020 WASSCE exams.
“We have also heard and seen students who wrote an exam, came out and it was like, you know we had an earthquake in this country, it wasn’t like one school or two schools… this same group’s performance is supposed to be outstanding that we shouldn’t be talking, it is the group I am referring to,” she said.
She added, “And they went and wrote the exams we heard of the leakage of the exams, we heard of invigilators being compromised, we heard many things and we also saw the students come out and speak about, ‘no this is not what we were told will happen’, now these students have As and we are happy? It is up to us.”
Reacting to her comments on Good Evening Ghana, the Minister for Education said, “under your [watch] as Minister for Education, did you hear of leakages? Of course, she heard of leakages. Exams were cancelled under her watch and then she even talks about the lack of textbooks. If there were textbooks in the schools at the time we took over, we wouldn’t have procured four core textbooks for every student…there were no books in our secondary schools when we took over at the Ministry of Education.”
Giving some statistics on education under both NPP and NDC, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum said:
“Under her watch as the Minister of Education in 2015, 23.9% of the students obtained A1 to C6 in Maths; under Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in the midst of COVID-19, these students courageously sit for the exam and obtain a score of 66.05% and madam, the least you can do is commend the hardworking teachers, headmasters [and mistresses] of this nation who supported these students through thick of tin in the midst of COVID-19, they did the impossible…
“…They did so well and instead [of] commending them, you look at these young men and women and tell them that they cheated. WAEC has an algorithm to detect students who have cheated and catch them every year. Let me tell you what this hon minister [Naana Jane] has taken for granted is that when you speak in Ghana, you speak to the entire globe because of what she said, some students may not get scholarships to certain universities around the world because they are going to look at them and say you’ve cheated you don’t deserve to get the scholarship from us…
“We don’t have to say things that we cannot substantiate…When you speak, the world listens and I plead with the hon minister [Naana Jane] that she should measure her words carefully when talking about WASSCE and WAEC, an international organization…” Dr Adutwum cautioned.