The state of the Science Resource Centre Project in senior high schools in Ghana

Abstract

The study describes the current state of the Science Resource Centre (SRC) project introduced into the Senior High School (SHS) system in Ghana by the Ministry of Education in 1995. This study was motivated by reports which focused on underperformance of the SRC project, without comprehensive assessment of the project state. In this study, the current state of the SRCs was assessed through document reviews, which informed the establishment of the SRCs, questionnaires and other instruments to determine stakeholders’ perspectives. Twenty out of 110 SRCs were involved in the study. Four self developed instruments used were (1) the Document Analyses Guide; (2) the Resources Assessment Portfolio; (3) the Stakeholders’ Perspective Questionnaires and the (4) Stakeholders’ Interview and Discussion Guides. The findings indicated that 90% of original centre and satellite schools no longer patronised the SRCs, largely due to growth of students’ population, lack of maintenance, replenishment and replacement of materials and obsolete equipments. Additionally inadequate training and retraining of teachers had led to poor teacher knowledge and skills for SRC project delivery. Some teachers had never made use of the SRC in the school term and as many as 32% of teacher-participants could not indicate the percentage of SRC practical activities in West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination. The current state of the SRCs was largely blamed on centralising SRC activities in host schools, without involving the host schools’ administration and the central government failing to maintain, replenish, resource and fund the project. The findings of this study would guide policy makers in reconsidering the objective for the centre/satellite system so that schools have ownership of their SRCs with equitable amounts of resources and maintain them as other school facilities.