3-year SHS: Poor and Rural Children are in peril!

The second reading of an Education (Amendment) Bill to revert the duration of SHS from 4 years to 3 years is currently going through parliament. Whilst the opposition NPP, which introduced the 2007 reforms that increased the duration to 4 years, are opposed, the government side: the NDC are in favour.

A nation’s educational policy should be seeking to do three things:
• To produce skilled individuals who can advance national development;
• To promote social cohesion by ensuring equitable access to quality education across all social and income groups; and most importantly,
• To afford children the opportunity to achieve their maximum potential to enable them to discharge their individual and social responsibilities.
Thus a national educational policy should be pupil-centered and in the case of Ghana, the GHANAIAN CHILD should be the prime focus. I am afraid the reversion to 3 years is not pupil-centred but politically-motivated.
What reasons are the government giving for the change? Well the bill says the change is being introduced in line with the government’s policy. One may be tempted ask: what policy? I am afraid there is none. To quote the Ghana News Agency (GNA), the Education Minister, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, said the three years option was to keep Ghana in line with other countries that wrote the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination. He also maintained that the results of some Senior Secondary Schools had indicated that they were capable of achieving higher performance and added that the only thing was to increase the number of qualified teachers to ensure quality education. However, the bill was not accompanied by any policy to provide the increase in numbers of qualified teachers. They have not been bold enough to give the real reason, which is to hit back at the opposition NPP for ‘daring’ to increase the duration to 4 years when in power.
The NPP reforms were, however, not baseless – they were informed by the problems that had beset the 1987 PNDC reforms that had seen 60% of Ghanaian children leaving school at age 15 with neither the academic (i.e. literacy and numeracy) skills for them to pursue further schooling nor vocational skills that would make them ready for the job market.
The MPs on the government side appear to have forgotten the outcry that greeted the results of the first SSS certificate examination, announced in May 1994 that showed only 3.9% of students receiving passing marks. The problems persisted till 2001 when the NPP took over the reins of government. It was common knowledge then that the high failure rate was due to: lack of textbooks, equipment, and trained teachers; and to inadequate time to prepare for the examination. The observation was that, if one takes into account examination and revision periods, the three years duration effectively afforded about 2½ years teaching contact.
This was the backdrop to President Kufuor setting up a Commission on Education Reforms chaired by Professor Anamuah Mensa to examine the reasons why most JSS students were unable to access senior secondary school. The Commission found a number of factors that included: inadequate facilities and infrastructure; parents unable to afford secondary fees; a lack of alternative tracks for students with different interests and abilities; an inability of students to meet the minimum requirements for further education; and a lack of interest in further education.
With regards to the duration of the SHS, the Commission was of the opinion that if facilities could be provided in all junior secondary schools across the country, it might be possible to deliver the SHS syllabus over three years. But honestly, we all know that this would be a tall order for the country, certainly in the short to medium term. That is the reason why the last government decided to increase the SHS duration to 4 years. This was to afford students the time to complete their syllabi in the various subjects. It was also to help students correct the weaknesses in their JHS core subjects.
The problem with the JSS and SHS is not with the older established senior secondary schools like Mfantsipim, Prempeh or Wesley Girls that have powerful and effective alumni associations providing the needed support; or the fee paying private junior secondary schools in the big cities. The real problem is with the newly created community day secondary schools in the rural and peri-urban areas and the old middle schools that have been turned into junior secondary schools overnight without the provision of the commensurate facilities and resources. These schools are ill-equipped to deliver the expanded curricula. Therefore even if we are considering changes in duration, it rather required the introduction of some flexibility to allow the brighter students to sit the WASSCE one year early instead of a wholesale reversion to 3 years.
Indeed if this bill passes (which I fear would be the case) we would be sacrificing the future of countless children in the rural areas of our country on the altar of politics. I am not the only person claiming this – the view is shared by Professor Kofi Agyekum of the University of Ghana; and Professors Djangmah and Addai-Mensah, two of the foremost researchers we have into our educational system. The views of these three have been arrogantly waved aside by government appointees with some even challenging the credentials of these professors.
Even if you disagreed, one will have to concede that the NPP reforms were comprehensive. They looked at education in its totality from kindergarten to the tertiary level. The reforms extended basic education by introducing two years compulsory kindergarten and catered for technical and vocational education as well as apprenticeship whose first year was to be funded by the state. They recognised the inadequacies of the newly established community day secondary schools. Hence they proposed to upgrade one school in each administrative district to serve as a model and to spread the advantages of a well-resourced senior secondary school. They started implementing this before exiting office.
The current government charges that the NPP government did not resource the reforms. This claim is mischievous; the nation was only one year into implementation before the NPP lost power. Hence if the NDC government really sees education as being essential to national development, they either have to carry on with the implementation or they should roll out new fully-funded comprehensive reforms of their own.
I have no problems if the NDC government seeks to revert to 3 years SHS – it is their right, having sought and won the mandate of the people. The problem I have with their approach is that this is not being done within a comprehensive reform framework. For instance, no specific educational and national goals have been articulated; no curricula changes have been announced; no expanded facilities are to be provided to junior secondary schools; and no new textbooks are being introduced. The most reckless of all is that they have not waited for the first products of the 4-year SHS to graduate to offer any tangible evidence to back the need to revert to the 3 years.
The ‘sting in the tale’, which most Ghanaians are not aware of is that: to avoid two batches of SHS students graduating at the same time, in future JHS students are to have a fallow year before going on to SHS. Imagine the number of girl students who may become pregnant and drop out of education altogether, whilst waiting. Imagine the number of students who may flock to Accra and other big cities to sell wares between moving traffic who could be lost to education altogether, having ‘tasted’ the independence that earning money brings. Reading about it I am baffled that not enough noise is being made about this in Ghana. The educated elite and the political classes probably have not got their children caught up in this quandary and so they have kept quite.
As usual it is the children of the poor and those from the rural areas who are going to bear the brunt of this ill-conceived, politically-motivated change. A revealing statistic for the ‘JSS-SSS’ era is from a study carried out at the University of Ghana which found out that between 60-90% of students admitted to do degree programmes came from the top 50 secondary schools constituting only about 10% of senior secondary schools in Ghana. The vast majority of the students in these top secondary schools went to private fee paying junior secondary schools. What does this say for social cohesion? Is it then a coincidence that we have a number of our commercial drivers being illiterate who are killing thousands on our roads every year? Is it a coincidence that we have a number of our youth being under-employed and unemployed? And is it a coincidence that a once low crime society has seen an astronomical rise in the number of very violent crimes in the last twenty years? To all these questions, I will say no.
But who is going to speak up for our youth and especially those from poor and rural homes? I am afraid there is no one; sadly there is no one.

Dr Yaw Ohemeng
Manchester, UK