Re: Government reintroduces quota for admission to colleges of education

Ghana will soon suffer from a human resource capital crisis if steps are not taken to address the issues within our educational system in the country. If we allow politicians in the country to continue to dictate how our educational system should work, then we should be prepared to see a collapsed system shortly. And this is going to affect every aspect of the economy since we will have nobody to manage anything in this country. Don't get me wrong! It isn't that everybody will be dead, but we might have produced students with dead brains from our institutions, who won't be able to do anything as far as using the knowledge from education to solve issues is concerned.

It's only in Africa, for that matter, Ghana that our political leaders introduce weird policies just to win political Power. However, what surprises me is the fact that people don't see the negative effects of many of these voodoo policies being introduced by our politicians. I won't blame my grandmother if she goes to vote for a political party that says it wants to introduce Free Education in the entire country when even past governments found it difficult to sustain a subsidised version of free education in only three regions out of the then ten regions in the country. Because my granny doesn't understand how difficult it is to operate free education, she will always vote for any political party that says it wants to offer it to the entire nation without the available resources. How about those who knew it couldn't be done yet supported it and voted for it? How do I call such people?

I called it a subsidised version because; what was done in the three northern sectors of the country wasn't entirely free education. After all, parents paid part of the fees of their children. The government only paid the feeding and tuition fees but the rest of the fees were paid by the parents. Therefore, even when parents were helping the government with the payment of fees, the suppliers of foodstuffs and other goods and services rendered to the schools were being owed by the government over long periods. All other governments that came had financial problems with paying part of the fees after parents had paid their part. It tells you there is too much to be done by the government. Therefore absorbing all fees in the senior high schools in the country wasn't and it's not feasible.

What therefore will convince me to accept the fact that any government in this country can provide free education to students in senior high schools throughout the country when I knew how difficult it was for the government to do it for a smaller number of students in the country? Yes, with the northern scholarship, the government paid part of the fees and the parents paid part of it. And as I said, though that wasn't even a fully funded free education, the government still owed suppliers. So how can anybody tell me we can afford to school our students in all the senior high schools in the country free? How and with what funds? These are the questions that needed to have been asked. But we failed to demand the right answer or we even didn't ask these questions.

Now, let me come back to the issue of the government reintroducing the quota system in the university colleges of education and possibly, in the musing schools in the country. Can someone please tell me what sense it makes to provide free access to education at the senior high school level only to restrict the entry into colleges of these students? I'm pretty sure after this the nursing training schools will also be asked to use the quota system again. I don't always like to bring mathematics into my writing because I'm not mathematically gifted. However, let me attempt this. I know my good friends will understand me even if I fail to explain what I want to use this difficult Math to explain.

Assuming this year alone, our senior high schools produce 20, 000 students who have passed their WASSCE and wish to enter the university colleges of education and each college is only allowed to admit 5,00 students and the colleges of education are only 20 in the country. How many students will be admitted from this large number of students and what happens to the rest of them? I don't think the essence of this free education is merely to allow our youth to acquire certificates from senior high school and end their educational career there and then. We must therefore look beyond just offering free education at a particular level and not being able to support it to another level. If our students acquire certificates from senior high schools but can't have access to University colleges or nursing because of a weird quota system, then we should stop operating free senior high school education. And use the money to expand these colleges and schools that will be able to admit more students.

There are two things. Either we completely scrub off the ineffective free education policy we have currently and reintroduce the system that allows parents to support the government to give proper education to our youth or we stop the payment of allowances to students in these two institutions thus, the university colleges of education and that of the nursing training schools. Look! If you have one piece of cloth and you are asked to use it to cover the privacy of either your mother or father, you must be bold enough to assess their situation and see which of them needs the cloth and make sure you cover that person to save a situation. We must all agree that we can't run the two together because our economy can't support their successful operation. Therefore, why do we continue to run the free education system to deny many students to enter into these institutions?

We are cutting down the intake of more students in these institutions just to be able to pay their allowances, feed them, and provide other teaching and learning materials. And we still need money to run the free education policy in our senior high schools. Whether we like it or not, there is enough evidence to show that the free education policy is hurting other sectors of our economy. I'm pretty sure this quota system is an IMF condition because; we need to cut down on costs to enable us to survive financially as a country. But even without the IMF demanding that we do it, we should have known it ourselves that the policy is too expensive to be sustained by our weak economy.

There is too much politics in our educational system and I can tell you it's not helping us. It isn't that the free education policy is bad, but there is too much politics in it that's not allowing us to see what to do to help us as a country. It's the politics in it that is why the current government is biting more than it can chew, just to score political points. The NDC put the quota system in these two institutions to reduce the cost of running them. They also took off the payment of the allowances for the same reason. Whether it's an IMF condition or not, there was a need to do that. The NPP played politics with it and assured the students and potential students of the payment of these allowances and promised to also increase the enrollment numbers. However, the latter has come to realise that it won't work. If this isn't a political miscalculation, then what is it again?

To conclude, let's give the needed attention to education to help develop the required human resource capital that is required for the development of our country. To be able to do this, then certain measures must be taken now. The free education policy must be reviewed to allow parents to support the government to offer quality and more effective education to our youth, the quota system in the two institutions thus, university colleges of education and nursing training schools must therefore be removed to encourage the enrollment of many students into these instructions, and the payment of allowances in these institutions must be stopped so that; the money from the allowances can be used to support other sectors of the economy.

It's only when we are bold to take these measures that, we won't only lose our human resource capital, but we can also develop other areas of the economy that will go a long way to expand the development of the country. The politics in our educational system must also be reduced to allow people with the right experience to handle it well.

Ghanaians are watching.