Ghana’s Education Minister Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum has issued an order to tertiary institutions to start admitting D7 students.
In his view, it doesn’t make sense to keep D7 holders out of school when the university can find a way around it.
According to the Minister, grades D7 do not mean that the student is a failure hence a need for a national discussion on the accepted D7 grades for enrollments into tertiary institutions in Ghana.
The Education Minister said this when he delivered a short address at the swearing-in and inauguration of Governing Councils of some public technical Universities where he tasked them to “innovate” and create access programmes for D7 students.
Our gross tertiary enrollment ratio is 18.8%, South Korea is 73.6%, so no nation has been able to show transformation without hitting 40 to 50% tertiary enrollment ratio.
“Mauritius is 40%, you go there and everything is changing. Our 18% will not change Ghana and that is why the President has set an agenda of 40%, what it also means is that you have to start looking at your programmes, more diploma programmes so that students sitting home with D7 will find a place in your institution.”
“There are institutions that are saying we are not getting the numbers but what happened to support students offering courses in diploma, electrical engineering and after that, you’re going to see the numbers going up and after that, they can go to work.
And then if they want to continue they can continue. So we shouldn’t see D7 as a barrier for students accessing tertiary,” he added.
