GNAT demands Free SHS dialogue
The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has called for an urgent national stakeholder dialogue to relook at the Free Senior High School (SHS) programme in relation to the country's current economic situation.
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The dialogue, the teachers’ umbrella body said, should be aimed at smoothening the rough edges of the programme, leading to a review for a seamless implementation.
's Speaking on behalf of GNAT, the General Secretary, Thomas Musah, told Graphic Online's Emmanuel Bonney that key issues that could dominate the discussion at the dialogue included the admission framework and processes, parameters for students’ qualification, infrastructure and ancillaries, sources of funding, involvement of parents, corporate entities, parent-teacher associations, alumni, traditional authorities and old students’ associations.
Logistics
The rest, he said, were the supply or availability of logistics such as textbooks, stationery, equipment and the training and retraining of teachers for the schools.
“As a critical stakeholder in the education enterprise, GNAT hereby calls for a drastic review and overhaul of the Free SHS Policy to ensure its smooth and successful implementation for the good of Ghana, our motherland.
“All concerned and interested bodies, agencies, academics, alumni associations, teacher unions, organised labour and parents, among others, should be brought on board for this very crucial and important dialogue to ensure a very broad participation and voice in this national assignment.
Expertise elsewhere on the African continent and the world at large could also be sought,” the GNAT General Secretary said.
Background
The Free SHS programme was introduced in September, 2017 by the NPP government in fulfilment of a campaign promise.
In the run-up to the 2012 and the 2016 general elections, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), led by the then candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, made free SHS the flagship of his manifesto.
Recent challenges under the programme, especially with regard to food items, have prompted a section of society to call for its review to let parents contribute.
Laudable initiative
Mr Musah noted that the Free SHS initiative was a laudable venture and, therefore, all efforts must be put in to ensure its sustenance, adding that as a patriotic corporate body, GNAT was prepared to participate in any dialogue or forum to help achieve its objective.
That, he said, was by improving it to help steer the country and its people, “especially the youth, out of poverty, ignorance, joblessness, ethnic and religious strife.
This is an onerous task that must be done! God bless Ghana, and continue to make it a land of peace and bliss.”
The GNAT General Secretary said although the intention of the “Free SHS Policy is good, the reality is that the government lacks the resources to make it reasonably practicable.
“Again, it is putting more burden on taxpayers and preventing resources from other alternative uses in the economy,” he added.
Mr Musah said from the inception of the policy, many Ghanaians, academics and critical stakeholders in the education sector wondered whether the government had the economic muscle to carry it through and make secondary education wholly free.
Cost-sharing
“Many even proposed a system of cost-sharing between government and stakeholders but the government would have none of it and decided to go solo, and the results are some of the challenges we are experiencing now.
“Added to these is the economic distress which has hit the country in recent times, culminating in government launching a comprehensive restructuring which involves both domestic and external debts, and running to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a three-billion dollar bailout to re-establish its debt sustainability,” he said.
“Consequently, government had to suspend the funding of many of its policies, programmes and projects, the Free SHS initiative not exempted.
“In essence, government is now pursuing measures meant to support its fiscal consolidation process to the detriment of all its projects,” he noted.
Since the introduction of formal education into the country by the European merchants which was later popularised by some missionaries, Mr Musah said parents had had to pay for the education of their children and that the schools were built, equipped and maintained by those who owned them.
From 1882, he said, the then government began to give the religious bodies who then owned majority of the schools money in the form of grants-in-aid.
“This laid the basis of a partnership between them and the government.
This was a characteristic feature of our educational system till 1951, when individual entities could not open schools without the approval of either the government or the local Councils.
“Before 1951, majority of the schools were owned by the religious bodies while the government owned only a few of the schools.
Before 1951, out of about 490,000 children of school age, only about 90,000 were in primary school,” he said.
Kwame Nkrumah’s era
He said in 1951, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the Leader of Government business, initiated a policy referred to as the Accelerated Development Plan under which many primary schools were built, equipped and maintained by Local Councils.
Tuition was abolished but parents were made to buy textbooks and other learning materials for their children.
That policy, he said, led to the employment of many untrained teachers.
As a makeshift measure, an emergency pupil teachers’ centre was opened in Saltpond to provide a six-week teacher training for selected middle school leavers to become teachers in primary schools.
“By 1951, the popular demand was for primary school education.
When the country became independent in March 1957, out of the population of five million people, 500,000 children of school age were in the primary school.
“Under the Accelerated Development Plan, government assumed paramount responsibility for the education of the country.
It is instructive, however, to note that the Plan did not touch the content and structure of the then existing education.
“The Education Act of 1961 made tuition free in primary, middle and secondary schools.
Government assumed responsibility for paying teachers.
Individual entities were permitted to open schools; however, the Minister of Education could close down schools which were considered not suitable.
Admission of pupils and students should have no consideration for religious beliefs,” he said.
Education for children of school age, Mr Musah said, was compulsory and parents who failed to send their children of age six to school were to be sanctioned.
“Parents were to buy textbooks and other learning materials for their children and that salaries, terms and conditions of service and discipline of teachers were to be prescribed under regulations made under the Act.”
Again, he said, among other things, government in 1963 adopted a policy of free supply of textbooks for primary and middle schools.
The policy was poorly implemented and had to be abolished soon after it was introduced.
Also, a policy known as continuation school was introduced in 1963 under which pupils in Forms 3 and 4 in middle schools were introduced to trades as a precursor of the junior secondary school programme introduced in 1974 under the Acheampong regime.