Free SHS: A Good Policy Poorly Implemented?

When then candidate Nana Addo Akuffo Addo promised Free SHS in the lead up to Election 2016, some of us in the education fraternity were ecstatic. Here was a candidate who doubtless knew the value of education and was going to put in place an epochal policy to ensure that as many Ghanaian children as possible get senior high school education.

Fast forward to roll out, and our expectations and enthusiasms got deflated bigly. I personally thought that in addition to a blanket free shs (which I also thought unnecessary at the time), Government and GES and all stakeholders were going to revise the content of the senior high school curricula and ensure that ‘Reading and Writing’ is emphasized. I even thought Reading and Literature Response could be made a standalone subject.

I thought and still think this necessary because Ghana has one of the worst illiteracy numbers in the world and this endemic illiteracy of ours can be traced to ‘lack of reading.’ And it is also one of the factors responsible for our underdevelopment.

Lack of reading, not lack of schools. Lack of reading, not lack of teachers. Lack of reading, not lack of resources. I wonder why our policy makers, educationists and NACCA don’t get it. Instead of revising the senior high school curricula in its entirety they rather chose to focus on writing out certain political players from the history books and sneaking in their favorite founders.

You see why it is wrong for politicians to be in charge of policy making? We need technocrats, educationists and change makers who will be given free rein to chart the right course for this country.

The results of the first batch of free shs students were released this year, and what was the conversation about? The opposition, which has forever, chose to not believe in the possibility of a universal free shs now, were perpetually praying and hoping that students failed massively. The incumbents, who have forever believed that only they know what’s best for Ghana’s educational sector and school going children, was forever shouting the results on rooftops.

Go ahead. Take a good look at the stats. Compare the results of the 2020 WASSCE to that of the previous three years—2017, 2018, and 2019, which is better? If you’re sympathetic to the ruling party, 2020 looks the best, if you’re sympathetic to the opposition, 2019 looks pretty good and they didn’t attend free shs.

So, what about us neutrals (they don’t believe there’s such a thing, by the way)? What do we think? What the best year? None.

The data only shows the decline in quality in pre-tertiary education in Ghana that the Free SHS has only come to compound. Are you wondering how Free SHS compounds the problems with quality education in Ghana? Wait for it.

2017, 2018, and 2019 saw the admission of loads of junior high school graduates who even had grades ranging from 25-50. If you’re a teacher, you’ll know how difficult it is to teach a first year student who’s still yet to master the rudiments of writing ‘My Self.”

Our educational sector was already messy, with the lack of quality curricula content, poor teaching services and remuneration, over populated classrooms and piss poor policy making, then Free SHS came along. Class numbers doubled and tripled in the blink of an eye, infrastructure got stretched beyond breaking point and some teachers were left exasperated teaching such substandard prospects.

Now, it’s all well and good to claim a teacher is incompetent if he can’t change bad material into good, but how can you do that when the odds are heavily stacked against you? How do you teach and engage with a class of 70 or 100? How do you individually engage with every single member? I’ve taught a class of 20 and a class of 50 before, and I can assure you the smaller class size members always end up performing better during tests.

Obviously, the NPP came up with an excellent policy initiative; but it was purely political and nothing epochal. It was rushed through, praised to the high heavens and is still being touted as the panacea to all of our socio-economic-developmental problems including low sperm count.

Criticize Free SHS today and you’re bound to have its fanatic supporters questioning your motives, insulting your intelligence and daring you to post your certificates on social media (one of them actually asked me to).

Truth is before we can actually know whether free shs has been good or bad for our educational sector, we need three batches to graduate and then take their results and compare it to the results of batches 2017, 2018 and 2019. One swallow doesn’t make a summer, and to any right thinking fairly intelligent non political person FREE SHS has got implementation problems.

The best way to have implemented it was to call on people who can afford to pay for their ward's education to go ahead and get them enrolled. One week later, I'll step in and offer free shs to all children who couldn't get enrolled in the first week then mix them up and divide them into four streams Red, Gold, Green and Blue—two morning sessions and two afternoon sessions.

Get the schools to utilize the money they got from the people who paid to get their wards enrolled to buy lots of books. Novels, stories, adventures series, tintin, etc., not only textbooks. And then make Free SHS available at all times to any fee paying parent who wants his/her ward to switch to free SHS from year 2.

It’s a good policy poorly implemented. And here’s hoping nobody votes for Akuffo Addo because of Free SHS. We already have that and even if there’s change of Government, it can only be made better. Nobody is gonna scrap Free SHS, so why vote for something you already have? Go ahead and vote only for what he is promising next, not Free SHS.

Author

Stan Dugah is a freelance writer based in the Volta Region of Ghana. Besides writing online, he’s passionate about inculcating reading habits in school-going children residing in rural and semi-urban areas. He has written for BBC Sportsworld and recently published a short story collection titled “Vacancy for a Lover.”