I really admire the President and the NPP’s commitment to making secondary education free for all, and not be a hindrance for the poor or deprived. THIS IS SUPER GOOD.
But surely, we should run our free education in a way that helps the young people, the state and the economy as a whole. Whilst lauding the opportunity for all to have secondary education, the few years of implementation points to several practical challenges – stifling the economy, collapsing private schools and businesses and creating lots of hiccups in the smoothness we’ve known with our secondary education. And this is why it surprises when the Government consistently insists on not ‘reviewing Free SHS’.
Let me say, I pity the government for getting a bad name for what it does out of good intentions for the people of Ghana.
But the sure fact is that good thought isn’t all that it takes to satisfy a people and prosper a nation. The good thought must be carried through a strategy of pragmatism, truthfulness and objectivity; otherwise this good intention would give the NPP more bad name – and I could predict that many parents who enjoyed the freedom from payments, and even the students who went through this free education, would vote against the NPP one day soon.
And this is simply because, we asked our governments to get our children opportunity to experience secondary education. We never really asked them to give our children food for free! If they choose to do so, they may, but must do it effectively – not compromise the training and knowledge we asked for!
It’s surely best to give all qualified Ghanaians a chance to secondary education, but should free education mean ‘FREE FEEDING’? In the countries that we are often proud to mention as successful education and economies, FEEDING IS NEVER FREE.
Rather, every opportunity is availed for qualified young persons
• to have admission into schools
• to have a good, reliable and consistent academic calendar
• to have the best of all the needed facilities for teaching and learning generally for free
with teachers and other staff who are well motivated to teach and guide the students to learn.
As know it now, Free SHS is a veritable yoke around the neck of government, the economy, parents, the GES, teachers, and the students themselves. The promise we hear is that an improved economy would help deliver a better free SHS programme. BUT the sadness is that the Free SHS as we have it now would even hold us back from developing a prudent state expenditure, a reasonable balance of payment and sound economy which would reenergise and grow itself and its people!
In my next issue, I’ll share my suggestions on our secondary education saga. But surely, the answer to the Free SHS issue would be from technocracy and objectivity – never through politics!
Thank you, Compatriots for your kind attention.
Yaw Sekyi
