Limited knowledge and guidance about different fields of study, career prospects, and programme requirements in the university can lead to uninformed decisions by high school leavers.
This affects their chances of being selected for programmes that connect to their future aspirations.
Africa Hall management and the Junior Common Room Council (JCRC) executives of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology have thus embarked on an outreach to educate SHS students on available university programmes and requirements.
According to the National Accreditation Board (NAB), Over 300, 000 students enroll in 140 accredited Ghana’s tertiary institutions to pursue different academic programmes for undergraduate, graduate, certificate and diploma.
Due to inadequate awareness and mentorship, a number of such students struggle to meet requirements.
Some also end up pursuing inappropriate programmes that conflict with their future aspirations.
The project dubbed, EduReach 0.3, seeks to sensitize high school students on major requirements of university programmes. The group engaged students of Kofi Agyei Senior High and Technical School, in the Ashanti region.
The outreach was themed, ‘’Education for All, Bridging the Gap’’.
Africa Hall KNUST President, Francisca Adom, explained that the initiative will help facilitate students’ chances of admission into their preferred universities and academic programmes.
“We want to give education for all and confidence towards their WASSCE exams. We let them know their cut-off points, their ranges and choices for university, as well as colleges, our departments and our faculties.
‘We believe it’s not just the developed SHS schools that are supposed to know their cut-off points or have access to information to easily get into the university. Developing SHS, less endowed SHS schools are also supposed to know how to get into the university so that we all get equal opportunities. We were here to impact knowledge and it was successful,” she said.
Headmaster of Kofi Agyei Senior High and technical School, Ebenezer Ofoso Aboagye was optimistic the programme will motivate students to study harder.
“University admission is very competitive, and if you do not work hard you cannot get the required grades. And their education today emphasized it for us. There are programmes that are being run and are unknown, students have been exposed to those programmes”he noted.
“It was a privilege to have these executives here. I have been with them from the start of the programme and it has given opportunity to students to directly interact and be exposed to more reasons and motivation on why they have to study and work to pass their exams,” he said.
Student beneficiaries acknowledged the importance of the initiative and expressed their gratitude.
“As a junior high student, I can read a course like tourism, hospitality and many more. What I learnt is that even as lower schools, we can do a lot of things. We have some scholarships like the MasterCard. We shouldn’t be like we can’t do it. Although we have big schools out there, we can do it more than them. We should focus on our strength and we can do our best. We are thankful for this,” Aboagye Konadu Grace, said.