Mahama Day Schools ‘Useless’ - Stephen Addae

Professor Stephen Addae has criticised former President John Dramani Mahama for siting Community Day Senior High Schools that are of no use in remote areas, suggesting a waste of scarce state resources.

According to him, some of the schools, especially those in the villages are useless as the e-block school project which has a capacity of 1,500 students each would struggle to get the required capacity.

He said the former President's much talked about school projects are only useful for the urban areas as those in remote areas are unnecessary because it would not be beneficial to these smaller towns.

“They are only useful for urban areas. All that they have put in the villages are going to be useless. The only people who benefitted from them are the contractors not Ghana's education,” the maverick educationist told Ghanaweb's KKB on his '21 minutes with KKB' programme.

Campaign Promise
Former President Mahama in the lead to the 2012 election promised to build 200 Community Day Senior High Schools between 2013 and 2016 when he wins the election – with the intention to build at least 50 each year within the four year period.

Although Ghanaians and civil society organisations criticised the feasibility of the project, the former President was adamant.

However, with just a few months to Election 2016, Mr. Mahama admitted that his National Democratic Congress (NDC) was not going to be able to achieve that promise.

He subsequently made an ambitious promise to complete the 200 Community Day Senior High Schools in his next term as President.

He at the time wanted Ghanaians to give him another term during the December 7 2016 elections to enable him complete the project.

“In my next term of office, by the grace of God, we will complete all the 200 new senior high schools that I promised. As I said, currently, 123 are under construction, and that means that the Central Region will receive additional secondary schools among the remaining over seventy schools that we shall build,” the President said.

Mr. Mahama on many occasions defended his move to build the 200 schools and once said “this probably will go on record as the single largest expansion of access of secondary education in the history of Ghana.”

He, however, lost the election miserably, becoming the first sitting Ghanaian President to lose an election.

Jabs
But Prof. Addae is of the view that the decision of the former President to site some of those schools in remote areas was a useless one as a result of lack of access to basic amenities.

According to him, the day schools in those villages pose some serious challenges to authorities, some of which include lack of boarding facilities for students who may be posted to such schools as well as teachers who may be denied bungalows.

He, however, made it clear that he was in support of building of community schools but reiterated the need to have sited approximately 10 smaller boarding or day Senior High Schools in such villages and not the huge edifices such as the e-blocks.

“They are useless because to transport 1,500 people you have to go about 30 km radius in order to fill them without any boarding, without any teachers' bungalows, nothing. How can you do so?” He queried.

“So it was a module gone wrong but I support the idea of having community schools”, he added.

BY Gibril Abdul Razak