Applause for free SHS - A call for improving school governance and leadership

On Tuesday, September 12, 2017, the Free Senior High School (SHS) programme was officially launched at the West Africa Senior High School in Accra, by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. Under this new dispensation, admission fees, school fees, boarding fees, feeding fees and several other fees have all been abolished and being absorbed by the government.

The initiative has been broadly lauded but has also been met with a few sceptical commentaries from some quarters. But let’s be clear - free SHS is absolutely the right approach.

The initiative, which has as its slogan: “Transforming Lives and Uplifting Communities,” is in compliance with the 1992 Constitution of Ghana and it is also in line with goal four of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals that calls on the governments of all countries to ensure inclusive and quality education for all.

Indeed, the “Free SHS Programme” is a major reform in the educational system that will vastly expand access to second cycle education for all school-going children in Ghana, thereby further enhancing the prospects of raising the literacy rate of the country from the current 76.6 per cent towards the desired ultimate target of 100 per cent.

Why it should be free

Education is the formal process of acquiring/imparting knowledge through systematic teaching/learning at an educational institution (primary school, senior high school, university, etc). Education helps children develop creatively and emotionally and acquire the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes necessary for responsible and productive citizenship.

How well pupils are taught and how much they learn, have a crucial impact on the ultimate quality of the nation’s human resources and subsequently on the competitiveness of the nation’s economy and ,therefore, on the quality of life of the people, as a whole.

So the purpose of education is to raise the capacity of the nation’s human capital to ensure prosperity in nation building. It is for this reason that education must be mandatory and not a privilege but rather a right to be enjoyed by all Ghanaians, irrespective of one’s economic status or circumstances, as enshrined in our 1992 Constitution.

So, Article 25, Clause (1), of the Constitution states: “All persons shall have the right to equal educational opportunities and facilities …”. Furthermore, for citizens to fully enjoy that guaranteed right, Clause 1 (a) states, with regards to the basic level, that: “Basic education shall be free, compulsory and available to all” and, with regards to the secondary level, Clause 1 (b) states that: “Secondary education shall be made generally available and accessible to all by every appropriate means and, in particular, by the progressive introduction of free education.”

Implication

However, in this new education landscape and its emphasis on equal opportunities for all children, it would be prudent to consider the implication of the ‘free’ connotation and its impact on the quality and performance of the system.

The government must now, more than ever, deliberately put in place proper safeguards that would promote the maintenance of standards in the new system, to ensure that the ‘free’ does not translate into lowering of standards, especially in comparison to fee-paying schools in the private sector. If not, the noble aspiration of reducing disparity in education, will be defeated.

We believe that to promote excellence under the “free” SHS policy, it is crucial for the government to take steps to make the school governing bodies central in the administration of the schools. Specifically, this article proposes that SHS governance be setup in every SHS and run on the sound principles of corporate governance, as is being done in the public service.

While the purpose of the school management team is to facilitate the day-to-day running of the school, the purpose of the school board of governors would be to guide the management team to be effective in the execution of its assigned mandate and functions.

Therefore, as part of the SHS reforms, an effective board must be put in place to provide strategic leadership to the schools through the exercise of oversight responsibility (on behalf of the government and other stakeholders) and ensure transparency and accountability in the management of the school’s affairs, including financial matters and the handling of various risks and threats that may confront the school from time to time, making sure that allocated public funds are well spent.

So, we call for a deliberate focus on the important role of SHS governing bodies and the need to recruit governors who are experienced and have wide-ranging capabilities such that all stakeholders (the government, community interest groups, teaching staff, parents, past students and society, at large) come together to work, in tandem, to deliver the desired game-changing step – quality - in the educational system.

Governance and quality/performance

We must focus on quality and performance because, obviously, the success of the free SHS system will be measured by the standard of excellence of the products of the education acquired by students from the new system (as compared with the old system).
Typically, the impacts of educational investments in developing countries are measured by inputs and outputs.
Missing from that approach of assessment are measures of performance that reflect whether educational systems are meeting their objectives; public resources are being used appropriately; and the government’s priorities are being met effectively.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we posit that good governance is the entry point to raising institutional performance and must be considered as an important integral part of the on going reforms. As a matter of policy, governing boards must be established for all SHSs in the country and their governance capabilities raised for effectiveness and their standards equalised across the country to produce the twin towers of high performance and quality in “free” SHS institutions.