It looks like the benchmark for Elections 2020 will be who did what for education. Throughout this electioneering campaign and earlier before, parents, students and stakeholders were on about “Free SHS,” giving praises and paying glowing tributes to the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, for making the policy possible.
Parents, especially those who are not well-to-do, feel so proud to be counted among Ghanaians whose children and wards have been able to attend Senior High School (SHS), and they give praises and thanks to just one man, H.E. Nana Akufo-Addo.
Currently, the “Free SHS” fever seems to be what will determine who will win the General Elections and who will not make it. As it is now, Nana Addo seems to be running high and at the top, not only on the ballot paper but of the preferred candidate to be voted for in this election.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer, ex-President John Dramani Mahama, would, however, not be left out. Since 2008 when Nana Addo brought up the idea of Free SHS, the NDC was never able to find an antidote to this powerful message of hope, but could only say it will progressively introduce Free SHS, and this is the issue.
The NDC, led by ex-president John Mahama, referred Ghanaians to Article 25; 1 (b & c), where it was stated that there shall be progressive introduction to free education in the secondary and higher institutes of learning. To John Mahama, the NPP and Nana Akufo-Addo had not introduced anything new, because Free SHS is already in our constitution.
But Nana Addo came with a different approach, which is not progressive but rather radical or revolutionary. And here it will be necessary to understand what progressive ‘introduction’ of Free SHS means. Progressive in this context means happening or developing gradually or in stages, like slowly.
And now here is the problem. The Ghana Fourth Republican Constitution was sixteen years old in 2008, and within that period the NDC was in government for eight years and nothing progressive was done to our secondary and higher education. The NPP took over from the second half and implemented free basic education, which was also in the Constitution.
Then the NDC took over from 2009 to 2017, and for the first four years nothing progressive can be suggested to have been done to secondary and higher education until after 2013. Then came the NDC definition of progressive, and so with that, school blocks were put up. Then in 2015 some media reports had it that the then president, John Dramani Mahama, launched Free SHS on September 17, 2015 as part of fulfilling the NDC’s campaign promise of progressively free education. On that day, the then president released GH¢12.2 million to pay for the first term of education for the students. The policy, according to media reports, covered 313,317 students in 569 schools across the country.
Today the NDC is holding fast to that launch, and since launch means start or set in motion, one might have expected that the brilliant policy of Nana Addo and the NPP would have been implemented. And so, to this day, there would have been, at least, one single person who would be out to give testimony that “yes,” indeed, he or she benefited from John Mahama’s Free SHS. It has not happened and will never happen.
The truth is that with the money given out to cater for the 313,317 students, each student will be covered with a maximum of only GH¢38.94 for the first term, when the fees for a term in 2015 was GH¢724.50 for boarding students and GH¢405.50 for day students.
It is now clear that if, indeed, the GH¢12.2 million was voted into the coffers of the Ghana Education Service, then it has not been used or it has been embezzled. No doubt, no one has come out to sing praises to John Mahama on Free SHS as the multitudes have been doing to Nana Addo. All said, Mahama’s GH¢12.2 million, if it has been utilised accordingly, would have benefited only 16,839 boarding students, or 30,839 day students. With these numbers, we could have had some people talking about Mahama’s Free SHS; we are a few more days to elections and all praises for Free SHS are going to Nana Addo.
The question is; is this how far John Mahama could go with progressive Free SHS? And what is his definition of progressive in the equation, here? For twenty-eight years when the Constitution became law, this aspect of free education has not been fully solved until the NPP came in 2001, and again in 2017.
The NDC is asking Ghanaians to wait patiently until it is able to construct all school blocks, and fully equip them before advancing free education, meanwhile, those who cannot afford must keep their wards and children at home or encourage them to learn some unskilled trade.
President Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP felt that a lot of potential strong human resource base will be left to rot if students drop out from school after Junior High School. The education system cannot be said to be perfect, however, it is the same system that is producing our entrepreneurs, industrialists, lawyers, bankers, and doctors, to mention a few. So let everybody come on board, and we shall certainly get more of such professionals in the midst, and, indeed, it happened. One day we shall get everything right in our education system.
The West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results for the first batch of Free SHS students, which some people who feel proud to be called Ghanaians fasted and prayed with the hope that it would be a total failure, came out showing remarkable improvement over last year’s. This clearly indicated that lots of brilliant students would have been dropped out and reduced to learning some unskilled trade, or becoming street hawkers or shoe shines. One such student, Thomas Amoaning, from Adieso, who would have become a driver’s mate today but for the Free SHS, had a perfect score and is going to benefit from a scholarship for his tertiary education.
Back to ex-president John Mahama, did he complete the progressive approach to Free SHS before he launched what he launched in September, 2015? If he did, then why the attacks on Nana Addo when he was implementing his version of Free SHS, and while at this, we will want to know the NDC’s meaning of progressive.
Is it not very strange that those who claimed that Free SHS would collapse the nation’s economy; that Free SHS should be resisted by all; that Free SHS was an “All Lie Be Lie” policy, and that Free SHS was“419”, are now fighting for airspace to prove that John Dramani Mahama was the first person to introduce Free SHS in this country. We should not be surprised if it comes out that somebody else from the NDC implemented the National Health Insurance Scheme in 2003.
Hon Daniel Dugan
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.
The post When Progressive Means…? Free SHS…Who Did What? appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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