President Akufo-Addo has said that he is open to a broader conversation on education in our national development.
According to the President, the conversation must look at funding, access and other factors that must work for the good of the educational sector of the country.
“One of the things people have been calling for is the review of the Free Senior High School (SHS).
I think we should have a broader conversation about the incidence of education on our national development,” the President said, in a meeting with the leadership of the National Union of Ghana Students at Jubilee House on August 31, 2022.
The Chronicle welcomes the call, given that it has been the chorus many Ghanaians have been singing since the introduction of the program, due to the initial difficulties that it encountered.
Education is undoubtedly the bedrock upon which every society develops and as such access to it is very important.
There are numerous examples of people whose SHS education was curtailed due to lack of funds, and who wish they were in this dispensation where SHS education is free and this could have changed their status and that of their family.
This was one of the reasons the idea of free SHS policy was welcomed in 2008, when it was announced by then candidate Akufo-Addo. Many believe the policy was a major contributing factor to his victory in the 2016 election.
However, the financial constraints this policy started putting on the public purse was what led to people calling for a review, including the President’s own Finance Minister, Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta.
The argument put forward by Mr. Ofori-Atta and some other senior citizens was that people who are capable of funding their wards’ education should be made to do so, whilst those who genuinely cannot afford should be made determined and assisted.
Mr. Ofori-Atta even stated that he cannot fathom why he would sit back and allow his ward to attend school for free when he is capable of paying for it.
Another argument was that whilst fees for admission, tuition, examination, meals and textbooks could be waived, boarding and uniforms could not.
If the government had heeded to these arguments and had not played politics with them, we would not have been in the situation by now.
The very first hurdle we had to deal with was congestion in boarding schools, since most of the students preferred to stay on campus.
This culminated in the introduction of the double track system, which many believe has impacted negatively on the quality of education.
The other difficulty we had to deal with was the unavailability of food in schools to feed the students. Some heads of institutions threatened to close down their schools until they had enough food to feed the students.
But as our elders say, it is only a fool who does not change his mind, and so we are happy that the government has realised the need to broadly engage the nation on reviewing the Free SHS policy.
If this broad conversation comes on, we expect government to take the suggestions put forward by educationists and stakeholders. It should also give a chance to some of these intellectuals to be part of the decision-making body so that we can get the best out of the policy.
