-the key role of the national schools inspectorate authority
” If Education is important to us.
Then it requires that we maintain
Best Standards”, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo
By Otor Plahar
The role of education in Ghana, especially at the pre-tertiary level, in building the human resources required for national development cannot be over-emphasized.
In line with this, the need for ensuring that standards and qualities are maintained in the schools is paramount.
In 2011, the Education Act, 778 of 2008 Education reforms, established the National Inspectorate Board (NIB), as one of the 22 agencies under the Ministry of Education.
It is charged with the responsibility for the periodic Inspection, Evaluation and Enforcing of Standards at the pre-tertiary level.
In addition to the above functions, The NIB also registers and certifies all private and public pre-tertiary schools in Ghana.
The board has since undergone significant changes in order to be able to discharge its mandate of enforcing standards and ensuring quality in pre-tertiary schools, including digitizing its operations.
Some of us recall with pain, visits by school inspectors to our elementary schools, years ago. We dreaded those years because the inspectors normally visited the schools unannounced, took positions usually at the back window of the classroom and observed silently.
The intention was to monitor the teacher in action. We were too young to understand the import but be that as it may, those visits invariably left some teachers badly shaken and any error in either dictation or mental exercises ended in corporal punishment:Learners of course became victims of misdirected aggression.
Thankfully, the NIB under its current administration, has rebranded, retooled and repositioned itself to assist schools to set standards aimed at promoting effective teaching and learning that will inure to excellent learning outcomes.
Unannounced intrusion into school premises is no longer the case as inspection visits are communicated ahead of time to respective schools.
The NIB has been in operation for almost a decade and as a result, certain limitations on its impact, were identified and to help address these challenges and make it more effective, the board was in 2019, reconstituted into the National Schools Inspectorate Authority (NaSIA), with the express mandate of Parliament to provide an independent external evaluation of the quality and standards in basic and second cycle educational institutions in the country on periodic basis.
Under the new identity, the National Inspectorate Board as previously known had become more vibrant and visible on the ground having asserted itself across the length and breadth of the country.
The National Schools Inspectorate, now employs a more collaborative approach to undertake inspections of schools to ensure it inures to the total development of learners and improved learning outcomes in the long run.
Parliament on June 3,2020, unanimously passed the Education Regulatory Bodies Bill 2019, to effectively regulate the Ghanaian education sector. On 26th August, 2020 Act 1023, came into force to
upgrade the National Inspectorate Board to the National Schools Inspectorate Authority (NaSIA) with more enforcement powers and autonomy.
The mandate of NaSIA is to set and enforce standards to be observed in all pre-tertiary institutions in Ghana; from kindergarten to SHS level.
Currently, the Authority provides five main services in that mandate; the school establishment, licensing, inspection, monitoring and evaluation as well as school transitioning arrangement.
Inspections are done on a regular basis to ensure that children are learning in a safe environment and also, achieving outcomes from the education system.
There is the School Ownership Transition under which private schools who decide at some point that they do not have the needed resources to run the schools but have the required facilities and infrastructure but want the government to absorb and take over its administration to become a government school.
Furthermore, a proprietor under NaSIA’s rules of engagement can seek permission to transition the running of the school to another in order to absolve the original owner from any future liability.
The Authority had long since, moved from the pen and paper mode of data collection to the use of tablets installed with Kobo collect-a special software- which enables data from the field to be sent back to NaSIA headquarters in good time for faster data processing and analysis.
This digitized approach to inspection has not only increased the operational latitude of the board but has also minimized the margin of any possible errors.
The NaSIA has regularly updated its website for publication of its inspection findings to the general public to have an idea of the performance of various in the country.
Until November 2019, when NaSIA took over the mandate from GES, they had no means of being self-sustaining and they were totally dependent on the government.
There were schools some of which are really not- fit-for-purpose and were not being inspected by anyone ostensibly because nobody from the public-school system has been there to see.
VISIBILITY
During inspections, the presence of NaSIA inspectors, are seen in all the districts in the regions.
However, NaSIA currently has made its presence felt even in places that hitherto were seen as inaccessible areas.
It is worthy of note that some key areas that the current leadership of NaSIA has given improvement is the digitization of its data collection process, periodic learning workshops for its school inspectors to upgrade and its open- door policy towards leadership of school associations.
With the remarkable successes chalked under the current leadership NaSIA’s rate and consistency of work will continue to positively impact teaching and improve learning outcomes in schools in Ghana.
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