“EDUCATIONAL RACISM”

By: Nana Kwame Osei Asare

I consider that this design of discrimination and neglect of the plight of polytechnic students towards our right to quality education, as enshrined in what is supposed to be the supreme law of the country, offends against reason and is unacceptable from every point of view.
Looked at it from the point of view of justice, it is clearly unjust that the poor innocent students who have paid partly for what is our fundamental right are been punished for the guilt of perhaps other people. While our fellows in building the nation (university students) in the future have received prompt and immediate solutions to every problem which confronts them, the polytechnic students have been treated with gross relegation at the peril of our career pursuit.
Successive Governments in Ghana from the pre-independence era till today have all emphasized the importance of formal education as a means to rapid national development. Hence, the colonial government placed a first-rate on education, especially, technical education. This explains the establishment of technical institutes in the 1950s to train the needed technicians and technologists for the accelerated development of the country. It is worthy to note that to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding railway lines and mining activities in Ghana, technical institutes were established in Accra, Takoradi and Kumasi.

In 1963, the Accra, Takoradi and Kumasi Technical Institutes were re-designated as Polytechnics without any legal backing. Two others at Tamale and Ho enjoyed the polytechnic status in 1984 and 1986 respectively. Cape Coast Polytechnic which was planned as a Polytechnic from inception was opened in 1986 (Nsiah-Gyabaah, 2005). These six second-cycle Polytechnics were elevated to tertiary status under the Polytechnic Law of 1992, without any upgrading in terms of facilities or staff. Later, in 1997, Sunyani and Koforidua Technical Institutes became Polytechnics and enjoyed similar tertiary status. The establishment of Bolgatanga and Wa Polytechnics (in 1999 and 2000 respectively) ensured that there is a Polytechnic in each on the ten administrative regions of Ghana.

It is therefore notably and woebegone that the central focus of the polytechnic education which is career-oriented has been misplaced and as such it is very bewildering for its continues existence when clearly not just I but all who have gone through the polytechnic education can say that all stake holders have placed a disdaining trademark on the multitudinous graduates of the polytechnic.
Our propensity to play our role as dauntlessly as any other educational product has also been treated with inequity comparatively with our colleagues from the universities which clearly is in contradiction to the provision of the enabling act of parliament 745 which establishes the polytechnics as tertiary institutions and has since 2007 replaced the PNDC LAW 321.
The “polytricktians” tried to be sycophantic with the plight of the pacesetter-graduates who agitated for a career path way by the introduction of the Bachelor of Technology programmes (B-Tech). However the inflexible approach to accreditation adopted by the authorities has reduced opportunities for career progression for such graduates. Regrettably, over four years down the line, no Polytechnic has been allowed to mount B-Tech programmes in business and the social sciences. The universities, both public and private, have been having a field day in mounting HND and B-Tech top-up programmes for Polytechnic graduates without the requisite practical content in the curriculum. They turn around and ostensibly accuse the polytechnics of producing unemployable graduates.

Are we therefore not right to tap from our bestowed faculty to call these happening "educational racism or genocide"? There are ten polytechnic across the country, but soon they will be no more because everybody will go to the university....maybe to reduce the number of pages in the constitution by scraping of the polytechnic act of parliament 745 (2007)