The Executive Director, Centre for Public Opinion and Awareness (CenPOA), has described the recently launched One Student One Tablet policy by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as a “very big misplaced priority.”

Michael Donyina Mensah believes there are several challenges confronting the sector that need to be addressed in the immediate term.

He said the Free Senior High School policy, for example, is facing serious challenges that ought to be addressed.

He revealed that the available data shows there are over 4,000 schools under trees, and the government must take an interest in addressing these challenges instead of investing several millions of Ghana cedis into the distribution of tablets to students in our secondary schools.

He also bemoaned the lack of junior high schools in some rural communities, which prevents primary school pupils from continuing school at the junior high school level or walking for long distances to attend school in other communities.

“These are all serious challenges we have not addressed, and if we have all these unresolved challenges and yet waste money on them or other things that are not priorities, then it is unfortunate. We at CenPOA see the one student, one tablet policy as a very big, misplaced priority," he said.

When asked if he does not subscribe to the assertion that we can not solve all the challenges at once, hence we would have to touch on them in a way that will ensure that there is the delivery of quality education across all levels, he said, “That is, it is important to deal with the issue of access. We have to ensure equity at all levels.

"There are those who are deprived and do not have access to the logistics others have, and so if you continue to hand over more to those who already have and deprive those who lack, then you are creating more problems in the sector.

"Our position is not against the distribution of materials to ensure the quality of learning, but when there is a wide gap and others have been deprived of basic access to quality education, you have a duty to address that before you think of introducing a policy to distribute one tablet each to a student in our secondary schools."

He was worried that some communities lack access to electricity, which would make it difficult for some of the students to make effective use of the tablets.

He added that there is also the possibility of students misplacing the tablets, among other challenges.

The key issue for us is that the policy is not a bad one, but there are more pressing challenges confronting the education sector that need to be addressed.