The United Nations Youth MP in partnership with the office of the Member of Parliament (MP) for Madina Constituency and MK Laboratories, Mr. Lovelace Bobobee Kwadwzo Edzor has appeals to the Ghana Education Service (GES) to start Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education at the basic schools level to kind of whip their interest in the sciences .
According to him, the current STEM education is placing much focus on the Senior HIgh Schools neglecting the basis which is the basic school levels.
Mr. Edzor made this special appeal at the ongoing 2024 Madina JHS students final year Science practical programme aimed to cover over 40 basic schools with 1500 students benefiting.
He said one way to start STEM education at the basic level is to construct a central laboratory in each constituency where these JHS students can visit to make pratical studies.
This, he said can make the studies of sciences very easy at the basic level because, it is now the new wave that nations can drive growth.
The Yourh MP role is to engineer all programmes focusing on the youth in the community
The Programme He revealed, is scheduled for the next five weeks adding that, when it come to the basic schools in Ghana it is difficult to teach the sciences because of lack of practicals. “So there is the need to bridge the the gap, that is why the MP and the Youth MP came together to help basic schools pupils in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in the constituency and the country at large. So, that is why we organised this programme to bridge the gap and also whip students interest in the sciences.”
He said the plan is to locate over 40 schools targeting over 1500 basic school students for the programme.
Mr. Edzor said the programme will help the students get better grades during their Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) if the children are expose to the pratical aspect of the sciences and also whip their interest in science during their development.
“Whenever we call on their parents to allow the kids to come, they should allow them to come because this is the beginning of an internet that can be grown in the students” .
The sciences are broad food chain, neutralization reaction, acid and bases, rusting, microscope that where they are able to see the cells and all the science topics that in their text books.
The programme will span for five weeks and it will be compressed to help the final year students go through before their exams while the Form 1 and 2’s.
“We have done this before and Ghana Education Service is aware of the programme and always been done in the schools but because it is weekend that is why we are doing it here”.
He revealed that one of the reasons why people don’t like STEM is the pratical aspect but said, most of the basic schools don’t have the means to do the pratical demonstration indicating that by next year, they would have a special place to organised it
A Laboratory Technician with MK Laboratory, Mss Celestine Kumadey and her team took the students through basic science practicals they are not able to do in their various schools such as density, cell morphology, the cell structures under the microscope, how the cytoplasm look like, the nucleus and food texting.
Again, the pupil were thought on what it takes to do the actual practicals so that it wouldn’t be like they are learning only the theory in classroom but also, to be able to recall whatever they would learn during the exams
On his part, Inusah Abdul Latif of the United Nations Youth Association (UNYA) and Youth Parliament in Ghana said, the initiative is in line with the UNYA Education and Education Support Committee so “we decided to support the programme to help the pupil abreast with the practical aspect of science.”
“We encourage the pupil to pay much attention on whatever they are going to learn so that they can reproduce it during examination,” he stated.
Some of the student expressed their joy for getting first hand practical information on some science topics that have been taught in their various schools.
