The British Council has organised a programme to introduce a new English assessment tool to the University Community known as Aptis. Aptis, which is usually taken online, is an innovative global English assessment tool designed to test, assess and evaluate the English language skills of individuals in corporate and educational institutions. Addressing the participants on Aptis test, the Country Exams Manager at British Council, Mr. Balvinder Kandra, said the Aptis exam is the smartest way to evaluate all four English skills – reading, writing, listening and speaking- in combination with a core grammar and vocabulary component. Mr. Kandra noted that Aptis is also flexible since one could split the sections and take the exam at a convenient pace. He indicated that the test identifies teachers and students’ needs, assesses students’ suitability or eligibility for particular training and recruitment. It also systematically and constantly evaluates students’ performance, filter students and identify those who are ready to take international test such as IELTS, and test students applying for scholarship programmes. He also added that Aptis has been designed to meet the needs of companies and institutions around the world to filter potential candidates for recruitment. Aptis test, according to Mr. Kandra, had been tried and tested in many institutions across the world. He added that as part of the package for adopting the Aptis test, the Council’s resource persons were prepared to assist the team in UCC to deliver the test with ease and indicated that Senior Members of the University would also get the opportunity to attend flagship programmes organised by the Council. For his part, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Prof. George K. T. Oduro, thanked Mr. Kandra for his presentation and added that the University would reflect on the insight provided on the Aptis since it has a lot of prospects.

The University of Cape Coast (UCC) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Teach for Ghana (TFG), a leadership organisation that focuses on recruitment and training of graduates to teach pupils in the deprived schools. TFG over the years has been recruiting university graduates and young professionals who are referred as Fellows from a wide variety of disciplines to teach Mathematics, English Language, Integrated Science and ICT in rural communities. With the signing of the MoU, UCC will enroll qualified TFG Fellows as candidates for Postgraduate Diploma (PGDE) in Education from the 2017/2018 academic year through distance mode. The University will also provide distance learning opportunities for the PGDE course in TFG's regions of operation and offer the University's programme to qualified candidates. In addition, UCC will supervise teaching practice and project work of students, jointly monitor the aptitude and progress of Fellows with TFG for the duration of the programme. The University will also award successful Fellows with teacher certification/ PGDE Diploma that will enable them to operate as professional teachers and trainers. In his remarks at the signing ceremony, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Prof. George K.T. Oduro, noted that UCC attaches premium on partnerships that focus on teacher development. He urged TFG to operationalise the MoU and added that teacher education plays a critical role to achieve the development of every nation. He commended TFG for providing the foundation upon which UCC could contribute towards achieving TFG's objectives. For his part, the Chief Executive Officer of TFG, Mr. Daniel Dotse, thanked the University management for the partnership and added that TFG would do everything it could to make the MoU work completely since the professional knowledge and skills of teachers were crucial for quality education.

The President of the Presbyterian University College (PUC), Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Adow Obeng, has noted that any nation that is unable to develop the skills and knowledge of its people through education, especially postgraduate education and utilise them effectively will continue to remain an underdeveloped country. Rev. Prof. Adow Obeng was delivering a public lecture on the theme “Making Post Graduate Education Relevant to Students and Society”, which was organised by the University of Cape Coast (UCC) Graduate Students Association (GRASAG). The lecture discussed some concerns of postgraduate education in the country. It came to light that due to the expensive nature of postgraduate studies and the fact that governments were unable to adequately fund these studies, African countries such as Ghana have been pushed to run postgraduate programmes as income generating ventures. “Currently, in Ghana almost all postgraduate programmes in the public and private universities are fee paying and are run mostly on sandwich and weekend basis to meet the needs of the working class who are paying”. Prof. Obeng, who is also a former Vice-Chancellor of UCC, expressed worry that such high fees and other expenditures deprived qualified, brilliant, creative, but poor students from participation. He indicated that besides, the massive expansion in the number of postgraduate programmes as well as student numbers has adversely affected the quality of products. “The programmes are mostly by course work and have no serious empirical or professional research components and has therefore created in the minds of Ghanaians that the universities are producing persons with postgraduate certificates, most of whom lack critical skills they should have acquired during the process of acquiring postgraduate education”. Prof. Obeng revealed that due to inadequate funding, and rising cost of postgraduate education, most students on empirical research select “manageable topics” in terms of cost and such researches hardly lead to any breakthrough. Rev. Obeng said the kind of research Ghana needed at the postgraduate level was applied and collaborative research adding, students would therefore require proper guidance by faculty to go through this route. He called for team of experts drawn across faculties to collaborate to teach research methodology to enable students gain the skills of writing standard proposal by the end of the course. The President of PUC said the quality of postgraduate supervision affects the quality of research work and, as a result, the relevance of postgraduate studies. He deplored the practice where postgraduate students were allocated supervisors who may not have adequate disciplinary background and may not be well grounded in the research area of focus, and methodologies for appropriate data collection, and offer advice to students. To help resolve this problem, the speaker called for regular training or seminars to expose supervisors and graduate students to their responsibilities in the research process and what graduate supervision was all about. He recommended that policies and guidelines of universities on postgraduate research should be reviewed from time to time and enforced, and erring supervisors should be counseled. He said a university cannot have high research output when it is primarily a teaching university with high undergraduate numbers. To this end, he called for a conscious effort to be made to create a postgraduate ambience in the university through reduction in undergraduate numbers and commensurate increase in postgraduate enrollment. He urged government to increase investment in postgraduate education and make national security, health and education a priority. An amount of 100,000 cedis was disbursed to 27 postgraduate students to help fund their research work. The amount was taken from the Samuel and Emelia Brew Butler-GRASAG Research Fund which is being supported by Nana Sam Brew Butler, the immediate former Chairman of UCC Council in memory of his late wife. The Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Prof. G. K. T. Oduro chaired the function.

Mr. Andrew Karas, the out-going United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Mission Director for Ghana, has paid a courtesy call on the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Prof. George K. T. Oduro. He noted that the purpose of his visit to the Central Region was to inspect projects initiated by USAID and decided to call on the University to also check on the projects initiated by the Mission at the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. Mr. Karas, who has been called home after a four-year duty tour to Ghana, indicated that USAID had initiated many developmental projects in the country, especially in the areas of agriculture, governance, water and sanitation, economic growth, education, and health. He expressed joy at the warm reception accorded him and described University of Cape Coast (UCC) as the leading institution in Ghana. “I know that UCC is a leading institution in Ghana for many reasons especially in the areas of fisheries, education, among others, and USAID is proud of that,” he noted. For his part, Prof. George K.T. Oduro, expressed gratitude to USAID/Ghana for its continued development assistance in Ghana, while describing the partnership between USAID and UCC as ‘flashy’. He stressed that the partnership had increased the visibility of the University and gave assurance that the University would wish to renew the agreement at the end of the project to deepen the partnership. Prof. Oduro commended Mr. Andrew Karas for his hard work in the country. He expressed optimism that the Mission Director would be good ambassador of the University wherever he goes and would never forget Ghana and UCC. “…You will be an ambassador to the University of Cape Coast wherever you go”, he said.