Excuses Won’t Teach Our Children

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a moment. When a child sits at home because there’s no space in a school we told her she’d been placed in, that’s not a statistic. That’s a family in pain. That’s a young girl watching her friends put on uniforms while she waits for a portal to tell her something different.

And right now, there are far too many of those children.

Nearly 55,000 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE)  candidates were left without automatic placement. Reports say some were wrongly sent to special schools. Others showed up at their assigned schools only to be turned away — no space, no desk, no teacher waiting. Meanwhile, government’s own numbers show 859,828 vacancies for 623,072 candidates. So the seats exist. The system just isn’t getting children into them.

That’s not bad luck. That’s bad management.

Then there’s the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). Over 183,000 young people finished secondary school without a credit in Core Mathematics. English dropped to 62.40 per cent — the worst in four years. These are real teenagers with real dreams, and we’ve handed them a certificate that says “you didn’t quite make it” with no clear road forward.

Minority Leader Afenyo-Markin said it plainly this week: “Excuses will not educate a child.” He’s right. And this isn’t about party colours. It’s about parents who can’t sleep, children who are anxious, and teachers stretched far too thin. It’s about a government that seems to move only when the story makes the news.

We’re not asking for miracles. We’re asking for seats in classrooms. For clear answers about how placements were decided. For funded remedial classes so a child who failed maths isn’t simply discarded. For real pathways into TVET and apprenticeships — not as a consolation prize, but as a genuine future.

The President has a choice. He can keep explaining, or he can start fixing. He can blame the past, or he can act in the present. He can treat this as a political problem to manage, or as the national emergency it truly is.

The 54,985 children waiting for school places don’t care which party built which programme. The 183,233 who missed their credits don’t care about press statements. They care about whether someone in power sees them — really sees them — and does something.

Ghana’s future isn’t built in conference rooms. It’s built in classrooms, one child at a time. Right now, too many of those classrooms have empty chairs that should be filled.

Mr. President, the time to act is now. Not tomorrow. Not after the next committee meeting. Now.

Because excuses won’t teach our children. Only action will.