Voodoo educational policies
I am old enough to sing hymns of yesteryear. From 1965 through 1968 or thereabouts, we used to enjoy “Early Tea” in secondary school: hot beverage and buttered bread as early as 6.30a.m. - before class started - and before breakfast around 8a.m. On Sunday evening, our sumptuous jollof rice enriched with corned beef went with a huge cup of “concentrated Ovaltine” drunk from cups branded in the school logo.
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I am old enough to remember the Continuation School concept of the Busia regime in 1968 aimed at making the elementary school system practical-oriented to provide practical job training to school leavers. This system metamorphosed into the present Junior Secondary School (JSS) system introduced in 1974 upon the recommendation of the Prof. N. K. Dzobo Committee. Actual implementation – with the addition of Senior Secondary School - was by the Rawlings administration.
The Kufuor Administration gave it a change of name into junior high/senior high.
Ghana has never had shortage of brains. If there is one curse from which we have not been redeemed, it is political convenience that leads our politicians to want to prove that their predecessors were wrong. Otherwise, how did this country come to the decision to scrap the Anamua-Mensah Committee recommendations which were being pursued under President Kufuor! If Ghana needed a panacea, that was it.
Under it, Universal Basic Education was to be 11 years, made up of two years of Kindergarten (compulsory for all children – not only the privileged!), six years of Primary School, three years of Junior High School (JHS) after which students could choose to go into different streams at Senior High School (SHS), comprising General Education and Technical, Vocational and Agricultural and Training OR ENTER INTO AN APPRENTICESHIP SCHEME WITH SOME SUPPORT FROM THE GOVERNMENT (caps mine).
It was that policy that made SHS four years to allow students to be exposed to all subjects before doing their selection? In our time, we had three whole years to make up our mind. The Anamua Mensah Committee proposed that students do that in one year.
The compulsory kindergarten period would have ensured that every child had two years of invaluable pre-school experience to open up the brain. What other way is there to begin acquiring “quality” education!
I am one of those who were skeptical about the guarantee of quality in Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s proposed “Free SHS” promise in in the 2012 elections. I concede, though, that his argument about our children terminating their education at JHS at a time when they are too young to enter the job market made sense. Nana Addo’s prescription, therefore, was to offer every child an SHS education by the end which the child would have attained working age, and with more knowledge (at least, more than what would have been in their head at JHS).
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My beef, however, was about ‘quality’: How were we going to ensure that education goes through the child and not the child merely going through education? Until voting day in 2012, I didn’t have an answer to this question on my mind.
Then comes President Mahama. He is putting up more SHS buildings to allow for access. That is fine, but the last time I checked, Nana Addo’s promise made provision for access. The breakdown the NPP flag bearer provided showed a progressive addition of school buildings and facilities.
So besides rushing through a programme of providing buildings at breakneck speed, how does this Mahama alternative solve the problem of quality?
The government has, meanwhile, announced fee-free schooling for SHS day students. According to a Daily Graphic report, “for the first term, 320,488 students will be covered” and “to demonstrate its resolve to successfully kick-start the programme, the government has released GH¢12.2 million to the Ministry of Education to pay for first term fees.”
That is where I have a problem because the very thinking that birthed the policy is “voodoo”. Who said that parents put their children in day-schools because they are poor? Voodoo because like other “free-policies” before this one, we have not thought through it, and it will not last. An NDC rep on Joy FM’s ‘Newsfile’ said some three months ago, that “we’ll now see what message Akufo-Addo has.”
It is said in our language that to look at death, you don’t need to go to a mortuary: just look at sleep. I concede that I have not gone to cross-check the figures at the Ministry of Education but on second thought I refuse to feel guilty for not doing so because knowing African governments in all politically polarised societies such as Ghana, the Ministry of Education would, by now, have come out to deny the assertions put up in the NPP press statement that they were not factual.
It is on the basis of this that I have no confidence in the sustainability of Mahama’s free-SHS, even for day schools only. Why should I, when Capitation Grant is in arrears; when GETFund is in arrears for eight months; when the feeding subsidy for SHS is in arrears for two terms, and the feeding grant for schools remains unpaid.
I am relating to the above in an economy in which junior doctors went unpaid for 11 months; where everything is in arrears, and the Black Queens refused to leave their hotel until they were paid their bonuses.