The Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education, Peter Nortsu Kotoe, has advised the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Ministry of Education to make sign language compulsory in the country's Senior High Schools (SHSs).
He said this after observing the exploits of students of the Sonrise Christian High School (SCHOSA) during their 20th anniversary celebrations and prize-giving ceremony in Ho in the Volta Region last Saturday.
In SCHOSA, sign language is compulsory so every student can understand and interpret it.
“So just imagine how beneficial a medical officer who has the capacity to communicate fluently with dumb and deaf patients without an interpreter would be in the society”, he said.
The ceremony depicted SCHOSA's excellence in its 20th year of existence.
According to Mr Nortsu Kotoe, who is the Member of Parliament for the Akatsi North Constituency, society had reached a stage where entrepreneurship had become more pronounced, in which people’s lives were constantly and rapidly improving towards standards broadly in line with the best in the world.
He was happy that, apart from the sign language, the school had intended to establish a technical/ vocational department to equip students with employable skills.
“It has been a long time since we departed from the idea of getting employed to becoming an employer,” the MP said.
Mr Nortsu Kotoe said private SHSs had come to complement the public schools to ensure that as many children as possible had the chance to pursue their careers.
That, he said, was why the government had allowed the private sector to benefit from the free SHS programme.
He said private SHSs had been outstripping their public sector schools over the years by producing the best students at the West African Senior Schools Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
He lauded SCHOSA for not being mentioned in any exam malpractice in the country and advised the students to concentrate on the fact that their presence was to learn and drop the get-rich mentality.
The Founder and Administrator of SCHOSA, Joseph Dzamesi, said that from a humble and challenging beginning, they could compete with the best public SHSs regarding capacity and achievements.
He said that on October 3, 2005, the school started with 135 students in three disciplines, eight classrooms, 11 staff members and a makeshift dining hall.
Out of those, he said, “we had dormitories for both the boys and girls”.
Being a Christian school with the Church of Christ as their parents, Mr Dzamesi said they had produced and are still producing excellent and disciplined graduates serving humanity in various sectors in the country and abroad.
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