By: Ewoenam Kpodo|Voltaonlinegh.com|
The Volta Regional Minister, Dr Archibald Yao Letsa has embarked on a day’s tour to some five senior high schools (SHS) in the region to monitor admission of fresh students for the commencement of the free SHS double track system.
The Minister’s tour on Tuesday, September 11 of the schools was to have first-hand information from the school heads and staff of the institutions on the implementation of the free SHS and the double track system, the first of its kind to be implemented in the country.
The schools visited included Tanyigbe SHS, OLA SHS, Sokode SHS, Mawuli SHS and Mawuko Girls SHS, all in the Ho Municipality.
Dr Letsa in his message at the schools visited, called on all to have faith in the government for a successful implementation of the free SHS policy and the double track system. He said the new system being introduced for the 2018/2019 academic year is nothing strange as it is being run in other parts of the world.
He touted the prospects of the new system and appealed to the staff who he claimed would one day become “consultants on the double track system” to lead the crusade and disabuse the minds of people against the system.
“A lot of people are skeptical about the double track but you’re here experiencing it and you’ll experience it more so that you tell others that it is no harmful policy. It is just to make sure that no child is left in the house.”
Dr Letsa said the system has been adopted to forestall infrastructure challenges encountered during the introduction of the free SHS policy last year and assured the staff, students and parents that government will still support infrastructure development in the schools.
Regional Director of Education, Madam Enyonam Afi Amafugah who was also on the tour, charged the staff to be committed in seeing the system succeed.
She advised the teachers to be hardworking and show love to their students so that the students can in the future, remember them for the good reasons and be proud of them.
The school heads gave accounts of the ongoing admission of new students with some of them citing network problems for the delay in the registration  process as evident in Mawuli School (which received 972 new postings to the school, the highest number in the region) where there were long queues of students waiting for their turn to register.
There were also the issues of students from different districts, municipalities and regions posted to the schools as day students and in some cases, students for both Green and Gold tracks were reporting at the same which the various heads were asked to deal with to ensure the students were not affected in any way.
The school heads assured the Regional Minister and his entourage of their readiness to support the implementation of the new system in line with government’s objective to give every school child access to free senior high school in the country.
The double track system which runs in some categories of public senior high schools in the country, creates a calendar of two semesters in a year for the SHS 1 class, containing 81 days per each semester and 41 days of vacation for a sandwich class. Under the new system which has the Green track starting the session, teaching hours are increased from six hours per day to eight hours per day.
Also on Tuesday’s tour were the Ho Municipal Chief Executive, Free SHS Regional Coordinator, Ho Municipal Director of Education and Staff of the Volta Regional Coordinating Council.
Source: www.voltaonlinegh.com
