Romanticising targeting FSHS: Who is poor, who is not?

We begin by asserting that apart from education being the single most important investment a nation could ever make in its citizens, providing free education for all children of school-going age ticks all the boxes in relation to morality, equity and human rights. 

The Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) policy, introduced in 1995, marked a significant milestone in Ghana’s free education journey.

Furthermore, Article 25 (1b) of Ghana's 1992 Constitution enshrines the right to free secondary education.

It was, therefore, gratifying that free education found significant spaces in the manifesto pages of the two major political parties, spanning over three different elections, demonstrating a shared commitment to this fundamental right.

Since implementation commenced in 2017, there have been numerous calls to review the Free Senior High School (FSHS) policy to enhance its efficiency and to ensure that it serves its intended purpose.

We associate with many of these calls, noting that even in the most efficient and advanced systems, reviews are often necessary to respond to changing trends.

Where we depart with many advocates of the review concerns what is essentially the “third rail” of free SHS: targeting aka means-testing. 

Our position is that of all the things that may come to constitute the review, targeting should not be one of them.

Our stance is informed by both historical and practical considerations, and we will proceed to elaborate why targeting is not a viable solution. 

Targeting

Given the enormous budget associated with FSHS, targeting seems a sensible suggestion on the surface. But upon closer inspection, the all too familiar dangers of political interference and elite capture lurk beneath the surface.

Whenever we have been required to stratify the society by such metrics as wealth to deliver some kind of benefit to the poorer rungs of society, no political lever is spared to immediately “qualify” the wealthy for these benefits as well, sometimes, to the exclusion of actual needy people.

The calls for targeting will essentially create another avenue for the rich in society to further distort the scales of equity.

Proponents of targeting argue that universal application of free education to everyone, including the affluent, is inefficient.

They insist that the amount spent on children from affluent backgrounds could be channelled to providing infrastructure, improving feeding and motivating teachers, among others. 

Sensible arguments all around, but how will we know the rich if they do not self-select?

Can we rely on even the people with the means not to audition to be considered as poor when the criteria for inclusion has been defined?  

Who would not announce themselves as poor and needing free education in a system characterised by an overwhelming integrity deficit and patronage in a nation such as ours suffused with cronyism?

Policies

It is widely agreed that the general good or equity is best achieved when policies treat every member of society equally. In the case of Ghana, we will go as far as suggest that targeting goes against the grain of the 1992 Constitution.

Beyond this, there is more to understanding the nuances of need than simply saying let us target those in need.

First, we risk committing both inclusion and exclusion errors. Our record keeping culture and the astonishingly poor data management experiences point to the real prospect that those who should benefit may be left out, whilst including those who ought not to have been considered at all by any metric.

But the real concern about targeting in the manner it is being proposed is not about clerical errors that might be made in unpacking the nuances of poverty. The more likely scenario is the deliberate and systematic rigging of any means-testing mechanism to the disadvantage of actual poor people, further pushing them to the margins of survival.

Historically, initiatives aimed at supporting low-income individuals have been misdirected, with funds often landing in the hands of influential or well-connected individuals.

For reference, we need look no further than some of our past and ongoing interventions that were designed to target poor and low-income people, and there have been plenty of them.

The Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) went largely to party czars and highly connected people.

Scholarships that were meant for brilliant, needy students went to the affluent and those politically connected. Even a scheme with a well-defined focus and coverage like the Disability Fund at the district level went to the well-connected and people with outsized voices. 

It is sufficient to point out that funds and schemes established by government to reach out to disadvantaged demographics eventually turn into a short-cut to channel scarce state resources to the affluent and well-to-do in society.

Partisanship

There is more. One of the ills foisted on us by our genre of multi-party democracy, is the extreme partisanship, winner-takes-all, and obese polarisation that tend to dominate every facet of national life.

This extreme polarisation, of course, means that changing political cycles will be, and are, accompanied by wide-reaching changes of key personnel to important government institutions.

In a society where the radio station you listen to or the social circles you cultivate – indeed any number of arbitrary markers – can be used to determine one’s fealty to certain political persuasions, entrusting partisan people to decide who deserves free education is concerning.

Even in rural communities, the stark unequal power relations see expression in the better-off hijacking common resources and interventions targeting poor people. 

In effect, we are frightened by the gloomy prospect that targeting in FSHS will give discretionary power to politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats and intermediaries.

To no one’s surprise, the scholarships and bursaries will go to the very people calling for targeting, the same people with outsized voices in national discourse.

The poor farmer’s ward at Gbantiraago and Apewosika is unlikely to be considered, thereby perpetuating and entrenching inequality.

Concerns

Some in the Ghanaian middle class calling for targeting in the FSHS programme may be doing so out of genuine concerns for the huge FSHS bill.

They would do well to remember that their own path to relative security was not solely driven by their intelligence and moxy, but partly, and in many cases, mostly, by universal application of social interventions that ensured they had access to opportunities that catapulted them to their present social class. 

President John Dramani Mahama has indicated that the policy has come to stay.

The ruling NDC has not hidden its intention to review the policy to enable it better address the needs of learners. 

This is welcome and must be pursued as a matter of urgency, but the government, and the ministry of education in particular, need to rebuff any calls for targeting, when the policy is up for review.

It is either free education for all, or no free education for anybody.

We draw on a fundamental legal principle: it is preferable to free a thousand guilty individuals than wrongly imprison one innocent person.

To this end, we argue that it's better to allow a thousand affluent individuals to benefit from FSHS than to deny one deserving poor person access to education.
 
The writers are a Chartered Accountant/Board Member of SDD Ghana and a Senior Research Scientist/Board Chairman of SDD Ghana, respectively.