Ex-NAGRAT Boss & NUGS Crush Free SHS

*As GNAT, CHASS, Catholic, Presby, Methodist Churches Still In Hiding *

By Gifty Arthur

An uncompromising past President of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) has proposed a national policy programme for the education sector, in reaction to the proposed free Senior High School (SHS), being trumpeted, by the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Mr. Kwame Alorvi would rather have a national education programme, with stakeholders indicating what should be done at what time and stage, to achieve accessible quality education, in especially public schools. The ex-NAGRAT boss also want included in the national debate packages for teachers, to encourage quality teaching to enhance learning.

According to Mr. Alorvi, inasmuch as education is the bedrock of every successful nation and so would never kick against free education, he feels the time is not appropriate for the policy.

He charged politicians seeking to lead this country to factor in their manifestos the exact problems affecting the sector, rather than just proposing anything to aggravate an already bad situation.

“Oh Senior High School, if its free and Ghana has the money to do it, I have no difficulty, but I feel that the stage in which we are now, and my experience in Ghana and GES, as a whole, I think that it would be difficult for us to do it now”, stressed Mr. Alorvi, who is also a tutor at Adisadel College in Cape Coast- Central Region.

Mr. Alorvi’s proposal is not different from what the Conference of Assistant Heads of Secondary Schools (CHASS) proposed in a communiqué issued at the end of its 50th Annual Conference, held in July, this year, at Cape Coast.

Mr. Alorvi, spoke to The Herald in an interview, last week, following the refusal of NAGRAT to state its position on whether or not the free SHS promised by Nana Akufo-Addo, is the panacea to the nation’s educational difficulties.

The ex-NAGRAT boss’ views were sought by The Herald after NAGRAT Vice-President, Angel Kabonu insisted that his group had adopted a “wait and see” attitude on the free SHS debate, to avoid the accusation that it was indulging in politics.

Mr. Alorvi, advised political parties promising free SHS, to first consider the infrastructure deficit both for students and teachers, which is prevalent in rural and urban areas of the country.

He wondered from where the country was going to get the large number of many teachers that the policy would require, when these teachers had not been trained in advance purposely for the project.

“Go to the rural schools, there is no accommodation for head teachers and students, alright! They don’t have the structures, no office, nothing. There is no infrastructure over there. Even in the big towns, schools there have overcrowded classrooms”, Mr Alorvi noted.

He went on “So now I would have wished that if Ghana has money now, we should set ourselves a target by which in the next three years, we have given each school, infrastructure, classrooms, dormitories, kitchen, assembly halls, masters’ bungalows”.

“Then from there, we also look at teachers. Now if I understand whatever is being said, it means that every student from JSS would go to secondary school. Which classrooms are they going to? Which teachers are going to teach them? The teachers are not there”, he outlined.

The Herald, in the past weeks, has been been seeking the position of stakeholders in the education sector on the proposed free SHS campaign led by flag bearer of the NPP, Nana Akufo Addo.

While NAGRAT, has in a press statement, issued last Wednesday, confirmed its stance as reported by The Herald last Wednesday, CHASS and Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) are yet to declare their stance on the feasibility of a free SHS in the country.

In the case of CHASS, a promised statement by its president, Mr. Samuel Ofori-Adjei, who doubles as the headmaster of the Accra Academy Secondary School, is yet to see the light of day.

Meanwhile, the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) in a statement unequivocally noted that students across the country were more interested in educational policies geared towards offering them quality education, rather than the freebies being bandied about by some political parties.

“The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) sees the education of the Ghanaian child as a significant one that is why the Union sees issues such as: how to deliver quality education; provision of jobs for jobless graduates and unemployed non-students; how to rally funds to upgrade facilities and infrastructures in the existing schools [as paramount] and not free education [which is] dominating in the coming General Election”, the group asserted.

NUGS expressed regret at the deteriorated nature of Ghana’s education system, saying it is “pathetic that for close to a decade the lives of Ghanaian students have been used for experiment by our national leadership, and our politicians seem to be operating on the same tangent”.

The statement said “a tour on our various campuses shows signs of lack. It is not a lack of food but lack of quality tools, equipment and infrastructure that will motivate them to unleash their God-given potential without which our nation-building agenda would be stunted. Education has become the reserve of the rich instead of the constitutional injunction that ‘education is a right not a privilege’.”

NUGS said many schools across the country continue to record zero percent (0%) in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE); a situation which has created room for charlatans to extort moneys from students in the name of re-sits.

NUGS stressed that “securing the promise of education for the Ghanaian students and youth will be our reason for taking part in this December polls. We must and will vote for a party with good educational policies and not junk”. The NUGS’s statement comes at a time when the deafening silence of some religious organizations, such as the Roman Catholic Church, Presbyterian Church, Methodist Church and the Anglican Church, who have been lobbying governments for a return of the secondary mission schools, on the free SHS debate has also been said to be problematic.

The Chief Executive of the Ghana Free Zones Board, Mr. Kwadwo Twum-Boafo, recently took issues with the churches, demanding of them to come out with their position on the campaign promise, which is being made to seem so easy and plausible without the required preparation.