Former Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Dr. Kwabena Bempah Tandoh, has explained why some students in Senior High Schools (SHS) are made to repeat a year, saying it is part of an educational process rather than a punitive measure.
Speaking in an interview on Adom FM’s Dwaso Nsem, Dr. Tandoh said repetition has always been applied when students have not mastered the material.
“At first, repetition was done when students had not done well. It is a process,” he said. “Before you repeat a student, you follow a process that is different from the normal one. It is not the mass repetition we used to see in schools.”
Dr. Tandoh stressed that every learner has a different pace of learning, noting:
“Education is a process. Everyone’s pace is different because we have different kinds of learners.”
He argued that in the past, the education system often failed students, particularly kinesthetic learners, because teaching was primarily auditory.
“What we have done in this country for a long time is destroy much of our human resources because the system taught students in ways that did not match their learning style. Kinesthetic learners were made to learn in an auditory way, and they struggled,” he said.
Dr. Tandoh added that the new curriculum introduced during his tenure trains teachers to identify the learning styles of students and adjust their teaching accordingly.
“If we are unable to help students according to their learning needs, we end up thinking that the students are not brilliant—but that is not true,” he said.
He stated that the aim of repetition is to support students in mastering the content and building their confidence, not to label them as failures.
ALSO READ:
2025 WASSCE: The narrative that double-track caused poor results is wrong – Former Deputy…
Falling WASSCE Grades: Teacher points to phones, truancy, and poor foundations as key causes…
2025 WASSCE: What would GES have said if most students passed? – Former Deputy…
