WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE

October is here again and most students from tertiary schools will be wondering what the month has for them since this is the month that most of them will have the opportunity to begin their service to the nation. 

Graduates travel all from various regions, cities, towns, and homes to other regions, cities and towns to serve their nation under poor conditions such as bad road networks, conflict in some of these areas and no electricity supply and to add insults to injury to work in a field they did not study.

Even though these graduates go ahead and serve in those areas, they do that with little or no enthusiasm at all just to cover the months as they come in order for them to take their allowances.

I would not be surprised if there are some national service personnel who won’t report to the field to work but will get people to sign their document for them to take their allowances.

What do we expect from theses graduates when they are made to do things they know nothing about, and besides don’t love what they are doing, it’s obvious that the desired results will not be achieved which in the end affects productivity. 

Employers always want experienced graduates to employ and yet the National Service Secretariat always posts graduates to various places to serve the nation for a year in areas they know nothing about.                     

Linking the poor performance of some junior high students to the National Service postings in as much as there are other causes of poor performance like some farming parents who are still not abreast with the significance of education, large class sizes, higher student-teacher ratios, lack of teachers, the needed desire for knowledge is not imbued into students from infancy, poor supervision of teachers and lack of infrastructure, the posting of wrong graduates to teach wrong subjects with a wrong attitude and interest is another area that must be checked by both the GES and the national service secretariat.

Governments, GES, parents and the students have all been blamed for the bad performance, but part of that blame should be put on the door steps of the national service secretariat for wrong postings.

Good results are always expected from students and yet teachers who are sent to teach them are mostly not qualified and don’t love the teaching profession hence poor attitude towards the process. The students I believe even though have certain pressing needs; positive attitudes from these teachers can go a long way to affect the morale of some students hence good results.  

The national service secretariat and for that matter the Ghana Education Service knows that when ever and individual is forced to do something unwillingly but does it because it is mandatory and because of the benefits it brings and not for the love of it, the outcome in most cases is not always the best.

 The Ghana Education Service should work hand in hand with the National Service Secretariat to ensure that service personnel’s who are posted to go and teach the young ones can really do good teaching before they are sent there.

There are those who will say it is not possible but it is if the country’s future matter to the authorities, then they can devise a way to do that.

That will be another step aside the rest in trying to ensure that students far from the city have access to dedicated teachers who love what they are doing and that can go a long way to affect the performance of students in those areas.

The level of productivity is very low because lots more of graduates are engaged in what they don’t like and have never studied but because of the need to survive they hold on to whatever they have hence the low input and low output.

The national service secretariat has come under scrutiny from various angles, but that notwithstanding the authorities should not play politics with it as that has been the norm with every issue that happens in this country, but rather consider the interest of the nation and also the youth it concerns in order to take decisions in our interest.