Free SHS: A Challenging Brilliant Idea vs NDC propaganda

Leading to the December elections, it appears our political leaders have become oblivious to the numerous fundamental problems Ghana faces. Instead of thinking of a joint action to assess how the many socio-economic problems we have could be minimized, our political leaders have rather resolved to contribute to a political atmosphere of unfriendliness, incivility and provocativeness. The coming up election is going to be nasty, brutish and of course, and of course very expensive. At the end of the day, the ideal candidate could be smart, selflessly and universally concerned about the welfare of Ghanaians, disciplined and have an amazingly great sense of fairness and justice and none of this would change the voting pattern of the average Ghanaian. Listening to the lack of vision of our political leaders and the immature political debates in our media, coupled with the uninformed voters who decide who's best fit to (mis)manage Ghana for another four years, non-partisan concerned citizens are forced to bury their sad faces in their palms wishing for a “savior” who could save Ghana from another three months of cheap rhetorical nonsense, baseless promises, and illogically painful propaganda by heartless politicians who won't remember their gargantuan promises after the elections have been won anyway.

Now, a fundamental issue most Ghanaians are confronted with is the cost of educating their children. Nana Akuffo Addo believes to have conceived of an idea that could commit his government, if voted into power, to become serviceable to the plight of the average Ghanaian parent who has to solely bear the huge cost of putting a child through education. In a recent interview on BBC World, he highlighted his vision for Ghana and admittedly, Nana Addo had some remarkable things to say: (1) the need for Ghana to move on from raw material export based economy; (2) the responsibility of controlling and determining how we deal with foreign investors; (3) our obligation to invest in the human capital of our young men and women to take advantage of our resources. On achieving his third idea, he has vowed to introduce a free Senior High School education if given the mandate to manage Ghana come December.

How he intends to finance his free SHS scheme has become a major debate on the Ghanaian political scene. The New Patriotic Party calculates that Implementing a free SHS would cost Ghana an additional 78million cedis annually. Well-to-do critics, who couldn't care less about free public education and aren't affected by the cost of putting a child through school, argue the free education policy of the main opposition party is not feasible because Ghana couldn't bear the cost. President Mahama last week asserted that what Ghana needs isn't free education but rather a practical and pragmatic approach in solving the challenges in the educational sector. Besides directing the ministries of Finance and Education to quickly review all outstanding payments to educational institutions and to make payment to them as quickly as possible, he failed to elaborate on what he means by practical and pragmatic approach. And yesterday in the news, the Minister of Education, Lee Ocran added that if free Senior High School education were possible in Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah would have implemented it. He further posited that free SHS can only be implemented in the next 20 years. What an illogical argument to come from a minister, and paradoxically from an educational minister, it needs to be added!

First of all, Ghanaians should stop revering Kwame Nkrumah as a god-like statesman with infallible policies. He may be the best president if we have had so far but he got a lot of things wrong as well and we need to have the courage to make changes and reverse his mistakes. It's been 46 years since Nkrumah. It is troubling to see that Kwame Nkrumah is still worshiped and loved unquestioningly and uncritically because of his deteriorating infrastructures: the dam, motorway, hospitals, factories, etc. Politicians as we know them, need these infrastructures to campaign on and given the mentality of the electorate in Ghana, it appears politically advantageous to see something concrete like a road than a page of statistics that shows school attendance is rising or investing in the potential of the future generation. And talking about making effective use of the resources available to us, we just offered a single Ghanaian 52million cedis for God knows what, so I'm a little bit dumbfounded as to why investing 78million cedis annually in millions of Ghanaian children is even subjected to debate.

I am, however, not saying the NPP's grand promise of free SHS shouldn't be swallowed without a certain degree of doubt. We indeed must be wary of vote-seeking politicians who campaign on the grounds that "If elected, we promise to..." We are all aware that politicians make promises in order get our votes and once they have our votes and are in office, we tend to discover that we had been tricked. Regardless of the intension of Akuffo Addo's free SHS policy, what cannot be denied is that the profound differences in private and public education structures and the vast inequality of access and factors of education, if not completely removable, must be balanced. People are free to pursue whatever dreams they have but it will, however, be desirable if no child had to be forced to wake up from their dreams because they came from poor and unfavorable homes without the means to finance their education. What we need to ponder over is that: Is there a human right to an education? Who has the obligation to make sure that our young children get one- their parents, the government or themselves?

A walk into our prestigious senior high schools: Prempeh, Owass, Presec, Holy Child, what have you, would reveal that for decades these schools have been generating students for our universities; people who end up becoming the elites of our country. And we follow this story further and go to those schools and enquire about the kind of primary and Junior secondary schools the students attended, we would notice the flaw and inequality in our educational system. But how many people are questioning the system that fails those who go to government primary and Junior secondary schools? I don't believe the children who go to these schools are not clever enough to make it to our desirous schools. The fault has to be with the system. But the elites who benefited from this unfair system have legitimate claims. They paid for the success of their children. That means the system works for those who can afford private primary and junior secondary education for their children. We cannot simply build on the old system that restricts success to those who avoid government provided basic education. We need to get the basics right first. It doesn't make any sense to build an education system from top to down. Our children must adequately be prepared enough to make use of a free SHS. On a scarce public funds, quality primary schools should have first claim. And when our government funded primary and junior high schools finally become competitive, many parents will save their money they would have otherwise invested in sending their children to private primary and junior high schools. The saved money could then be invested in the senior high schools as part payment whilst the government foots the other half. Whatever the case, I think what Ghana needs now isn't necessary free SHS but rather improved primary and junior level education and a system that would attract some of our greatest minds to consider teaching at all levels. The first phase leading to free SHS should be investing in teacher training institutions, building the capacity of of teachers and giving them incentives to improve the quality of education. The system that requires our young and sister to pay bribes before gaining admission to senior high schools, nursing and colleges, universities and polytechnics must be destroyed before we offer the youth a new hope. Have we also considered those who wouldn't even want to go beyond junior high education even if Ghana offered them free university education? Unless Nana Addo can assure us that he can transform the current system completely whilst at the same time providing free SHS education, we definitely need to think of an alternative. But does anyone seriously believe the educational problems of Ghana could be solved within four years? Maybe I need to remind my readers of a story about a little girl asked her father, "Daddy? Do all Fairy Tales begin with Once Upon A Time?" And the father replied, "No, there is a whole series of Fairy Tales that begin with 'If elected, I promise..." Come next 2016 election, all the parties would be singing the same song.

The cost of putting a child through education is a national tragedy that both parties must come together to solve. I am simply outraged at the criticism of the NDC leaders, who in their failure to provide any constructive criticism to Nana Addo's altruistic proposal, are rathering acting like they don't have any clue about what it means for a poor mother to put her children through school. Is NDC merely against the free SHS idea because they have envisaged the idea stands in the way of their re-election or they are concerned about the budget of Ghana? As financially unrealistic Nana's idea sounds to the NDC leaders, they cannot deny that this is a brilliant, albeit challenging idea, that must be worked on by Ghanaian leaders and thinkers to construct a universal education policy out of this idea. And this should be done with the needs of the Ghanaian poor child in mind. Even if it means supporting this idea with loans, so be it. At least when our children grow up and have to service our national debt, they would do so with less indignation knowing that they benefited from the loans. Ghana is still saddled by loans from the past that the current and future generation have to service even though they didn't benefit from the purposes of the loans. Education might be expensive but I have seen poorer nations spend more on education than Ghana is doing. Granted, a free SHS could be very expensive but our national resources, loans and aids are currently wasted on things that burden our future generation with debts but no benefits. I think it's a matter of priority and for that we have to give credit to Nana Addo for intending to fund the free education policy by avoiding unnecessary expenditure like the huge judgment debts.

When outsiders termed Ireland going from the sick man of Europe to a rich man in less than a generation a “miracle”, the former Deputy Prime Minister, Mary Harney, insisted that "It wasn't a miracle; we didn't find gold. It was the right domestic policies." Part of the policy was to make secondary education free, enabling a lot more working-class kids to get a high school or technical degree. As a result, when Ireland joined the European Union in 1973, it was able to draw on a much more educated workforce.

Here is Ireland's advise to those who want to follow its footsteps to prosperity: make high school and university education free; seek out global companies; open your economy to competition and then hang in there, because there will be bumps - and you, too, can become a very rich nation. Ghana can become great if the masses must be penetrated with reason in order to enlighten them on how to hold those in power accountable. Until that happens, we must consider Nana Addo's three points, cut down on corruption; start investing heavily in education today and perhaps in 20 years, we will reap the initial benefits of today's policy.


Dominic Mensah.