The Recent Overreliance On Apor, Copying, Reproduction Of Exam Questions As Answers, And Other Exams Malpractices By Wassce Candidates, Blame It All On The Unfeasible And Politically Motivated Free Senior High Education Policy.

One would have thought that a developing country like Ghana would always look for better ways to improve teaching and learning in schools across the country to stimulate our quest for development. Because; it's a fact that every developing country needs comprehensive human resources capital to accelerate its development and this can only be achieved through proper and quality education.

However, the story is different from what goes on here in Ghana where the focus is rather on mass education without considering quality. I'm not for once against the idea of every Ghanaian child of schooling going age to being gifted access to free education at the senior high level. But my worry, however, hinges on the fact that we can't give that promising educational package to a larger number of students without compromising the standard and quality of our education system.

The mention of the policy, among other numerous empty campaign promises by the then aspiring candidate of the NPP, as something he intended to do for students in the senior high schools in the country and to ease the financial burden of parents, I told myself we were doomed if the NPP comes to power. Honestly, many would have thought the end of parents suffering to pay for school fees at that level was coming to an end. But it never was. It's all because we prioritise free things over quality too much in this country.

Many Ghanaians, especially, parents, suddenly stopped thinking about the prospects of the policy. Their main focus was rather on the money the government will be paying to relieve them from any financial encumbrance in terms of payment of school fees. It's the same thing when it comes to voting in our national elections. Many people focus on what they will benefit from individuals and not what capabilities or competencies the person may possess to enable him or her to do the work we are voting them to come and do for us. We are simply too materialistic and greedy.

We failed to question the source of funding for this enormous project. Again, we woefully flailed to seek answers for the already struggling Northern Scholarship Programme which was fraught with financial challenges before the gullible acceptance of the fact that, education could be made free for the entire nation at that level. How impossible some of us saw it through!

I have always said that if we stop our corrupt practices and channel the nation's resources to improving our kids' proper and quality education, we will one day be better off as a country that will be blessed with the needed human resource capital to manage the affairs of this country. But not when we are highly corrupt and not proactive in our priorities as a country.

We can't implement a massive financially demanding project like a free education programme without sidelining the other sectors of our development. The millions of money that go to the programme will certainly deny the development of other sectors like roads, hospitals, security, electricity, potable water, etc.

However, our political inclination never allowed us to take a second look at the unfeasible nature of the policy. We could at least pilot the programme in a few selected areas and see how it goes before rolling it out for a full-scale implementation. But many thought that all children must enjoy the package. We even didn't bother about any cutoff point to make sure those who don't pass well shouldn't be allowed to enjoy it.

It is rather a sort of wholesale enrollment. And once we saw the enrollment numbers shooting up, we were glad to ourselves and thought we made it. No, we haven't. We have rather worsened the plight of the children who went through the programme and came out with nothing. We have also wasted all the money we spent on such children without any good results to show off.

How could we have made it when some of those who flopped in their BECE, gained access to the programme? They arrived at the senior high level and many of them couldn't even write their names without spelling mistakes. I can tell you even if the country didn't face any economic challenges and the programme remained unchanged or not reviewed, we were only going to be producing street graduates. This is a result of the flaws in planning well before the implementation of the programme.

Apart from the fact that the programme was met with infrastructural and other challenges, our inability to prioritise the programme and give much attention to technical and vocational education as the best part of the programme was another significant failure on the part of the policy implementors. As a developing country, our ability to produce goods and services is the only way to satisfy our quest for development. This is where I think our stakeholders in the area of education keep failing us.

If you ask my opinion, I will say it's the technical and vocational institutions that need this free education to help the country enrol more students who will come out and support the production of goods and services sector of the economy.

Another thing the programme failed to address is the mass promotion of students from one form (class) to the other without the students failing or not. I thought the essence of the end-of-term examination is to scrutinise students who are doing well and hence, promote them to the next class. Then why don't we apply the same thing to the student who enjoys free education?

Maybe, the government feels that if such students are repeated, they will waste money and other resources. So, they should be pushed through the system to complete. But I don't think the essence of the free education programme is just to see students go through the classrooms and come out without any better or good results that can help them continue their education.

Another cardinal issue to look at concerns the rate at which most female students get pregnant these days while still in school. It's good to accord children their rights. But for me, we must look at the moral effects of some of these rights we want our children to enjoy. A female student gets pregnant and is allowed to continue school with the pregnancy is a recipe for immortality. It encourages others to go around and have sex indiscriminately. After all, they know they can't be sacked from the school.

I suggest the government should make it a make that any student who gets pregnant before finishing the programme should be denied the free education package and her parents be made to pay the fees for her. If this is put in place, it will reduce if not stop completely the alarming rate at which female students get pregnant these days while in school.

The government could also make their parents sign a bond to confirm that their female children will stay in school until they complete without getting pregnant. If the child defaults, the parents must pay back all the investments the government put in them. This will make parents advise their female children in school to stay away from boys or men.

In a nutshell, the IMF has directed us to do what should have been done to have positive results from the programme. Now let's go back to the drawing board and figure out the right areas to give this free package to. Our technical and vocational education needs a greater part of this package to help accelerate the development of the country.

We should also eschew any political sentiments in implementing the programme, once we all accept it is a good policy for our educational and development opportunities. A broader consultation should also be done to provide the ideas that will push for the sustainability of the programme.

There must also be a cutoff point for enrollment into the programme. This will make the programme competitive and attracts the best brains. It will make all the students attach some level of seriousness to the programme.

We only have the eyes and hands to see the problem and pen them down. But we are not the authority. We, therefore, plead with the authority to do the needful this time around to help sustain the programme for the sake of our future generations.

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