Free Senior High School... But are the billboards free?
With alacrity, billboards on the Free Senior High School (SHS), sprang up at all vantage points in the city just about the time of the launch last week.
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The billboards, with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo’s picture, mustering up his almost picture-perfect smile, has the heading, “Free SHS is Here!”
My first reaction when i saw the billboard at the Tetteh Quarshie Circle the first timewas, “So what?”
The free SHS has been discussed and flogged in Ghana since it became a campaign issue between the two dominant parties.
Then, and now, I am for the policy that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) went to lengths to sell to us all.
Now, we have been told that the policy as being implemented is not comprehensive but progressive just as what was piloted by the past government.
In fact, on one radio station, I heard one opposition member explaining that the progressive was to gradually accrue until 2020 when all students in SHS were covered.
Then, we will all be in election and campaign mode, and the NPP government can say that they kept their promise.
Irate parents
We have all watched on television these past few days the roll-out of the policy.
Parents besieged schools, demanding their “share of the free cake”, and did not mince words in serving notice that they would not allow themselves to be cheated out of the freebies.
Other parents complained that school authorities were asking them to go for forms at district education offices to fill before bringing them to the schools, a development they claim was out of the blue and given to them on their arrival at the schools to enrol their children.
Still more parents had to be given spirited advice on how school administrators had to manage the long queues at school halls for the registration of the “free students.”
Unique?
I believe the fanfare around the policy is much more than the thoughtful implementation of it, and the billboards are a perfect example.
With a key policy that has been touted since 2008, all Ghanaians are aware and have heard of it.
Either the billboards are to glorify efforts, efforts that are the sine qua non in any enlightened society or are some of the ways to siphon our tax money.
In fact, the efforts by the government can only be termed extraordinary if they are unique.
However, we are told that the previous government, with the support of the World Bank, started the progressively free SHS under the Senior Education Improvement Programme (SEIP).
Maybe, their mistake was keeping their “efforts” quiet and not mounting huge billboards to announce their “initiatives”.
The SHS may be free because of the number of students targeted at a go this year that is about 424,000.
Stop the fanfare
It is a basic function of governments to get their people educated.
Perhaps, Ghanaians have suffered for so long from bad governance that those who come and do the minimum and mount billboards are seen as heroes and heroines.
Since the idea of free SHS was mooted, Ghanaians have been concerned about sustaining the policy and sources of funding.
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), at a press briefing on the 2017 mid-year Budget Review, expressed concern about the sustainability of funding sources of the policy about two months ago and several others have expressed similar concerns.
However little the budget for the billboards, can we stop that and use it to fund the policy?
Would it not make economic sense if the money is used by district education directorates to better educate parents on the policy or for the printing of handbooks for heads of schools?
Can we stop the fanfare around a duty imposed by the Constitution and use the resources wisely for funding the policy?