Free Senior High School policy laudable but...

S. Kojo Mbra Assan Opinion Apr - 01 - 2017 , 23:46

Undoubtedly, being kept in suspense is sometimes not pleasant but I will indulge you to keep reading to see my line of thought. Based on the 2016 campaign issues, the free Senior High School (SHS) policy did not come up frequently.

As I recall, this was one of then-candidate Nana Akufo-Addo’s major campaign promises during the 2012 elections. There was another promise during the 2012 campaign by the immediate past former president John Mahama to build 200 senior high schools.

Hmm, all one can say now is those promises undoubtedly add some excitement to the electioneering processes even if they appear unrealistic, isn’t? In this piece, names of certain personalities have been used solely for illustrative purpose and nothing else.

It is intriguing that the free SHS policy would be rolling out from the start of next school year (as several news reports on the president’s speech at Okuapeman SHS on February 11, 2017 indicated). Intriguing it is, but I still care about the “free SHS policy-induced” headache the sector minister – Matt Opoku Prempeh is enduring.

But the fact that elected leaders are following through with their promises is pretty commendable. And it is even more heartwarming that the president’s first major announced policy was on education – human capital investment. Human capital development via education and skills training, is crucial for economic growth and prosperity as well as social development.

Regardless of a nation’s stock of natural endowment and infrastructure (physical capital), very little would be achieved with less educated and unskilled workforce. Countries like Singapore, South Korea, Mauritius etc. have been successful in turning around their economic fortunes because of heavy investment in human capital. Notwithstanding the impressive free SHS agenda, it is also surprising that this policy is being pushed through hurriedly without much transparency and well-developed plan with citizens’ input(s). It is important to note that, the nations that are reaping the benefits of human capital investments proceeded in a manner that was strategic to ensure the realization of desired outcomes.

Historically, Ghana has done so well since independence to promote human capital investment. Various successive governments have all contributed significantly to this effort. The expansion of secondary schools during the Nkrumah era through the Ghana National Education Trust Fund; attempted reforms of secondary school education during the military regimes of the 1970s; construction of several primary schools during the 1980s up to the ushering in of democratic governance in 1992; and since then the establishment of new universities, upgrading of other quasi-tertiary institutions into full tertiary status as well as liberalization of the tertiary education sector for private participation and, improvements in the service conditions of employees at all levels of education have been refreshing though the desired outcomes still remain been far-fetched.

Free SHS has now surfaced to take off soon. Lovely, isn’t it? It is important to note that free SHS has been running in Ghana in some forms for quite a while. Many people had deservedly or undeservedly been beneficiaries of free secondary education in Ghana by way of government or Cocoa Marketing Board scholarships. The current senior minister, Yaw Osafo Marfo from Akyem Awisa Presby School might have deservedly been a beneficiary of free secondary education with government funding. Again, free SHS has been running in the North and most likely, many people from the North had undeservedly been beneficiaries. My daring instincts tell me former president John Mahama (JM) and current vice-president Mahamudou Bawumia (MB) might have undeservedly been beneficiaries of free secondary education based on their families’ socioeconomic status (SES).

Ghana’s deficiency with documentation and records is of no doubt and so expectedly, internet search from several sources including WAEC-Ghana could not yield information on the proportions of JHS students in private schools that go on to enroll in SHS. Available data to me do not sufficiently speak to the issues I want to address here. So, I will manipulate the data reasonably and then supplement the scant data with qualitative information by using personal stories (like those cited above) to add more ‘flesh to the bare bones’.

According to Ministry of Education’s 2013 Report on Basic Statistics and Planning for Basic Education, total JHS1 enrollments in 2012/13 school year was 553, 079. Of this number, 442,936 (80.1%) were in public schools with 110,143 (roughly 20%) in private schools. A policy brief by ISODEC retrieved from http://www.isodec.org.gh/publications/Policy%20Brief%20-%20Education%20GDN.pdf pegs the average pass rate of BECE at 62%. Now let’s take the hypothetical situation that, with all else equal, the total JHS1 students enrolled in 2012/13 proceeded to complete in 2015. The 2015 edition of Ministry of Education’s referenced Report shows that total SHS1 enrollment in 2015 was 275,733 where 260,210 (94.4%) enrolled in public schools and only 15,523 (5.6%) enrolled in private schools. Thus, approximately, 50% or just half of JHS1 students who enrolled in 2012/13 school year went on to enroll in SHS given our hypothetical situation of no dropouts and no fatalities.

The critical issue here is the exact percentage of JHS students in private schools who move on to enroll in SHS. That data is not readily available and so let me switch to qualitative stuff. Is it not the case in Ghana that the bulk of students in SHS (except for the few in very remote places) attended private schools such as the Achimotas, John Teyes, Christ the Kings, Ridge Schools etc? The reason for this phenomenon is not far-fetched. We all would do the same if we were in the position to do so for obvious reasons – the quality of public basic schools in Ghana is not the best. It is an open secret that, a good portion among even the trained and certified teachers in the public schools together with the managers of the public education system send their children to private basic schools. This is a clear case of their lack of confidence in the very system they themselves manage and operate!

I clearly recall that when I started secondary school in the 1980s, just 12 of the 41 students in my class came from public schools. Total Form 1 students, I recall, was over 160 but less than 50 came from public schools (then known as Syto). The wealthy and well-to-do pay hefty fees to well-resourced private preparatory schools just to prepare their children (wards) essentially to pass very well to get enrolled in secondary schools. Since basic and secondary school attendance in Ghana is not based on zonal/district residence, these students after passing so well, then get enrolled into prestigious public SHSs anywhere in the country. Those schools including Mfantsipim, Wesley Girls, Presec, Pope Johns, St. Louis Girls, Bishop Herman, St. Francis Xavier, just to name a few, tend to be well-resourced by government, other agencies and their alumni. Will it therefore be any surprise that nearly all the 110,143 private JHS1 students enrolled in 2013 proceeded to SHS in 2015? In our hypothetical case, it means approximately 40% (39.9) of SHS enrollees are from private schools! Do such students really need free SHS? Free SHS ought not to be need-blind i.e. free for all.

In a World Bank study case in 2013, Basic Education beyond the Millennium Development Goals in Ghana: How Equity in Service Delivery Affects Educational and Learning Outcomes, the authors highlight a concern that, public expenditure in Ghana tends not to compensate for deprivation but instead exacerbates inequality by allocating fewer resources per child to deprived districts. Conceptually, it is not an overstretch to assert that free SHS at this point would be an attempt to exacerbate “socially deprived groups” of Ghanaians. There are many young people with promising academic potentials who live and attend basic schools outside the big cities.

Those public basic schools are poorly resourced not only in terms of requisite materials and facilities for effective teaching and learning but also for lack of well-trained teachers. And even where qualified teachers are available, they are not fully dedicated because they feel less motivated. Chances for such students to pass and proceed to SHS are so slim. Although, the 1992 Ghana’s Republican constitution stipulates that education in all forms should be free for all, it is imperative that available limited resources are utilized optimally for the benefit of all. Hence, providing free SHS to all students, the bulk of whose families could easily afford SHS feeding and other expenses is not socially equitable. Most importantly, the free SHS policy ought to be selective or need-aware, by targeting instead at the financially needy i.e. those who attend deprived public schools and eligible to go to SHS but cannot afford without government funding.

Many academic high-ability students do not continue to secondary school because their parents or families cannot afford to take care of the cost involved. Many potential Osafo Marfos and probably, Alban Bagbins are being wasted! Such potential talents may not be fortunate to earn foreign government or institutional funding to attend school abroad. For such promising students in public basic schools outside the big cities as well as those among the urban poor, the free SHS policy is a welcome news.

But I also hasten to add that, the anomalies associated with the existing free SHS program need to be fixed. First, there are some students from the North who belong to high SES families. Their families send them to expensive basic private schools in big cities elsewhere and later to the North for free secondary education. Second, there are other students whose parents are rich Northern indigenes and can easily afford to pay their children’s fees. Both groups of students should be excluded from the free SHS program except for academic merit awards. You see why I guesstimated JM and MB undeservedly benefited from free secondary education?

Let me add here that, efforts to provide more examples with such individuals as Haruna Iddrisu, Dominic Nitiwul, Kwaku Kwarteng, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah, Shirley Ayorkor-Botchway and Anita D’Souza to determine their suitability or otherwise of free secondary education were futile because biographical profile of these public personalities on the internet is so scanty. The focus on these personalities is not because they are the most deserving of free secondary education. I cite their names here because of their considerable leverage over policies. Most of the real deserving students enroll into the sciences and eventually found themselves trapped in hard-pressed and impactful professions like medicine, engineering, agricultural sciences. Only few forcefully beat the odds to emerge at the policy level to influence national progress such as Prof. Kwasi Obiri Danso (VC of KNUST), Prof. Agyemang Badu Akosa, formally of National Health Service, Prof. Esi Awuah, former VC of UENR, Prof. Kwabena Frimpng Boateng, Ing. Robert Woode, Mawuena Trebah, formerly of GIPC and countless others.

Free second cycle education needs to focus more on technical and vocational institutions with curricula adapted to appropriate modern trends. Currently, secondary school education in Ghana is heavily academic-oriented. Huge numbers of SHS graduates, like their university counterparts, end up looking for jobs in the services sector. Ghana as a developing country is yet to witness a strong growth in the manufacturing sector yet the services sector is growing at an alarming rate. The question is whose primary and manufacturing products are we servicing? Your guess is as good as mine. Beside the few financial institutions in the formal sector and the hospitality industry, imports and marketing of imported products have become commonplace.

Any surprise why marketing remains among the top preferred programs in Ghanaian tertiary institutions? In a sense, we export jobs to others abroad. Our human capital investments should be strategic. Development policy experts recommend a good mix of primary, secondary and postsecondary education investments in a manner that ensures that desired outcomes are realizable with forecasted plans. Second cycle education in Ghana needs reforms to appropriately incorporate technical and vocational training. The reforms if well done, could even be of great benefit to the proposed “One district, one factory” policy agenda.

The current SHS system needs to be aligned well to the postsecondary institutions. Just making SHS free would not address the poor linkages between second cycle schools and postsecondary institutions. Polytechnics have clamored and within a relatively short period (a little over two decades) they have now become or becoming technical universities with tendencies towards programs in the arts and humanities because their main source of recruits are still SHS graduates. The polytechnics student recruits significantly exclude those from second cycle technical and vocational schools. The universities are not exempt especially the private ones.

At the outset of upgrading polytechnics into tertiary status, existing diploma and certificate programs were transferred from the universities to the polytechnics. Now these same programs have resurfaced in some universities under the guise of market-oriented programs with no regulation and control by the NCTE which remains just an advisory agency. Currently, there are two others – National Accreditation Board (NAB) and National Board for Professional and Technician Examination (NABPTEX) which focuses more on technical institutions. Just one agency, NCTE (National Commission of Tertiary Education) is needed, with appropriate reorganization and good injection of resources and manned by competent and suitably trained professionals to replace the current NAB-NABPTEX-NCTE uncoordinated confusion.

With no national plans for organizational and funding reforms of postsecondary education in Ghana, the free SHS policy poses huge financial challenges in the proximate future. If free SHS becomes ‘nationalized’ without appropriate systems and institutional frameworks in place to ensure effective training, standards would be negatively affected. Given the current liberalized tertiary education sector with several loosely-controlled players dominated private university colleges, many of the ill-prepared SHS graduates would slip into some of the private universities as had been reported in both the print and electronic media in the past. Ultimately, the number of postsecondary graduates would swell beyond the capacity of the labor market leading to attendant serious ramifications.

Lastly, president Nana Akufo Addo and his government should ignore the unfortunate advice to pull brakes on all existing social protection programs. Keeping the social protection programs would make those who are economically and socially vulnerable feel inclusive of any modicum of national gains. Instead, the president and government should consider pulling brakes on the rather rush policy of free SHS for serious review to ensure that this educational plan is transparent and broadly reflects the views of Ghanaians. This would facilitate its collaborative and effective implementation. For now, the free SHS policy would serve best the economically disadvantaged and thus, help address one of the macroeconomic imperatives – equitable distribution of the national cake.

The author is a PhD student in Higher Education Administration & Policy at University of Florida and can be reached via kmassan@gmail.com