Ghana's Graduation Circus Must End: Why the GES Ban on Opulent School Gifting Is the Sanest Decision This Country Has Made in Years

There is a particular kind of madness that dresses itself up in celebration. Ghana has been living inside it for years, and we have been too dazzled by the spectacle to notice what lies underneath. Videos of teenagers receiving brand-new salon cars, stacks of cash wrapped in floral bouquets, and luxury accessories — all on the grounds of state-funded public schools — have gone viral with clockwork regularity every examination season. We shared them. We reacted to them. Some of us aspired to them. Very few of us stopped to ask what, exactly, we were celebrating.

The Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Ministry of Education have now asked that question — officially, and with regulatory authority. Their directive banning opulent post-examination gift-giving and temporarily suspending Senior High School graduation ceremonies has been met with protest from those who feel a personal freedom is being curtailed. But when you look beyond the emotion, what remains is this: the ban is considered, it is timely, and every Ghanaian who genuinely cares about what education is supposed to do should understand why it was necessary.

This is not a conservative reflex. This is not about punishing success. This is a society being asked to decide what it values — and whether those values belong inside a classroom.

Schools Are Supposed to Be Ghana's Great Equalizer

The foundational promise of public education is straightforward: regardless of who your father is or how much your mother earns, you walk through that gate and you are measured equally. You wear the same uniform. You sit the same examination. You are held to the same standard. Ghana's public school system has historically carried this promise, however imperfectly.

What has been happening at campuses across the country in recent seasons is the quiet erosion of that promise. When one student is collected in a brand-new vehicle while her classmate's parent arrives by trotro, the school stops functioning as a space of equal dignity. It becomes a mirror — reflecting and amplifying the very inequalities it was designed to soften. GES Head of Public Relations Daniel Fenyi was precise in articulating this: the directive exists to preserve the school as a "leveling ground." That is a statement of educational philosophy, not bureaucratic formality.

Children from Modest Homes Are Being Emotionally Affected

The debate around graduation gifts is not only philosophical. There is a genuine human cost being absorbed by young people, and research supports this concern.

A 2019 study in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence found that conspicuous wealth displays in school settings significantly elevated social anxiety and depressive symptoms among students from lower-income households. The effects were most pronounced during milestone events — precisely the kind of emotionally charged occasions that WASSCE completion represents. Child Rights International (CRI) Ghana has raised similar concerns in the local context, noting the heightened vulnerability of adolescents to social comparison during formative years.

We are not speaking of abstract discomfort. We are speaking of measurable psychological distress experienced by young people on state-funded campuses, in front of teachers and institutional leadership. That is worth taking seriously.

Rewarding Completion Before Results Are Even Known

Communication expert Hamza Suhuyini raised a point that deserves more attention than it has received: the lavish gift-giving occurs immediately after the WASSCE — before results are marked or released. The reward, therefore, is not for academic performance. It is for showing up.

Investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni described these events plainly as a "vanity fair," and the characterization holds. When completion — the minimum required of any student — is treated as an occasion for extraordinary material reward, the connection between effort and recognition is severed. What lesson does that leave with a young person entering adult life?

Modest Families Are Being Put Under Pressure They Did Not Sign Up For

Africa Education Watch Executive Director Kofi Asare has been among the clearest voices on this point. The culture of competitive gifting does not only affect wealthy families exercising choice. It quietly coerces families who cannot participate.

When elaborate displays become the visible norm — when every viral video from graduation season features cars and cash — the implicit message sent to lower-income parents is that their contribution is inadequate. Eduwatch has documented families taking out high-interest microfinance loans to purchase gifts, not because they can afford to, but because they cannot bear for their child to feel publicly left behind.

According to Ghana's 2021 Population and Housing Census, over 56% of households fall into the low-income bracket. A graduation culture shaped by the experiences of the most affluent families is not a neutral phenomenon. It places an invisible burden on the majority.

The Free SHS Conversation That Needs to Happen

This is perhaps the most uncomfortable dimension of the debate, but it is an honest one. The Free Senior High School programme was built on the premise that fees represented a genuine barrier for ordinary Ghanaian families — and so the state, meaning Ghanaian taxpayers, absorbs the cost of secondary education.

Against that backdrop, the sight of families gifting brand-new vehicles on the grounds of those same state-funded schools raises a legitimate policy question. Policy analysts, including those associated with the Institute for Fiscal Studies Ghana, have noted that the Free SHS programme lacks a meaningful means-testing mechanism. The graduation spectacles have made this gap more visible. That conversation about equitable resource allocation is one the country should be having calmly and honestly.

Campus Security and Institutional Order Are Real Concerns

The Ghana Police Service issued formal warnings about post-examination indiscipline across multiple districts following recent graduation seasons. These warnings responded to documented incidents: traffic disruptions from motorcades, security breaches on school grounds, and the logistical pressures created by large-scale private events on institutional premises.

A public secondary school is not an event venue. Its grounds, security arrangements, and infrastructure are funded by the state for educational purposes. GNAT General Secretary Thomas Musah has been consistent in urging that schools be protected as academic sanctuaries. The police warnings affirm that this protection requires more than goodwill.

Social Media Has Changed the Reach of These Displays

A decade ago, a graduation gift ceremony might circulate within a community. Today, it reaches hundreds of thousands of viewers within hours across TikTok, Instagram, and X — many of them young people in the same age bracket as the students featured.

The American Psychological Association's 2023 report on social media and adolescent wellbeing found that exposure to conspicuous wealth displays online was linked to increased materialism, reduced life satisfaction, and elevated risk-seeking behavior among young people trying to close the perceived gap. Ghana's youth are not isolated from these dynamics.

The school campus has become an inadvertent broadcast location — lending institutional credibility to displays that then travel far beyond the school gate. Removing the campus as a venue does not eliminate ambition or celebration. It simply withdraws the institutional frame.

A Return to Values That Were Always Ours

GES Director-General Professor Ernest Kofi Davis described the influx of flamboyant graduation displays as an "alien culture" inconsistent with Ghanaian values. This observation is worth sitting with, without reading it as a rejection of progress or prosperity.

Traditional Ghanaian culture — across Akan, Ewe, Ga, Dagomba, and other expressions — has long emphasized modesty in public display, recognition tied to demonstrated merit, and communal celebration that is inclusive rather than competitive. The loud, individualistic, wealth-comparative model of graduation celebration that has grown in recent years does not emerge from these traditions. It has been shaped significantly by social media aspiration culture.

There is nothing backward about asking that educational institutions reflect the communal values of the society that funds them.

The Accountability of School Leadership

One of the more significant features of the GES directive is the clause holding headteachers directly accountable for violations on their campuses. This responds to a pattern that developed quietly over time: some school heads tolerated these displays in part because wealthy parents used graduation occasions to make donations to school infrastructure — creating an unspoken exchange between access and institutional goodwill.

That dynamic, however informal, introduces bias into the school environment. Families who cannot make donations receive no equivalent goodwill. Holding institutional leadership accountable is the structural step required to address this, and it is a reasonable one.

Where That Money Could Actually Go
From a practical standpoint, Ghana's tertiary education financing challenges are well-documented. The Students Loan Trust Fund remains undercapitalized. University accommodation costs have risen. Professional program fees place significant pressure on families transitioning from secondary to tertiary education.

A family that spends GH¢150,000 or more on a graduation gift for a student whose results are not yet known has made a financial choice with long-term implications. Those same resources directed toward university costs, professional tools, or a young person's early career could generate returns — human and economic — that a depreciating vehicle parked outside a school gate cannot. The ban creates a natural pause. It is worth asking what some families might do with that pause.

What Graduation Should Be
The temporary suspension of graduation ceremonies is, as its authors have framed it, a reset rather than a permanent abolition. When those ceremonies return, they can return as what they were always intended to be: a communal recognition of shared academic effort, presided over by the institution, and accessible in its dignity to every single student — regardless of what their family can or cannot afford to bring through the gate.

Ghana's students deserve a graduation that honors what they have worked for. They deserve a ceremony that sends them forward with their confidence intact — including the students whose parents could not afford to give them anything beyond the school fees, the uniform, and the daily meal that made it possible to sit that examination in the first place.

The GES directive is not an attack on success or family pride. It is a defense of what education is for. And in a country that continues to invest in the promise of its public institutions, that distinction is worth protecting.

The classroom has always been Ghana's great equalizer. Let us keep it that way.

About the Author
Chief Tutu Baffour Asare Brownsy Williams is an engineer, author, and multi-disciplinary creative strategist whose work sits at the intersection of analytical thinking and cultural commentary. He holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering and an Advanced Diploma in Software Engineering, and applies that problem-solving orientation to national socio-economic and educational discourse.

He is the founder of Brownsy Silva Company and a columnist on major national platforms, with work spanning cultural criticism, independent filmmaking — including the short film Silence (2025) — and writing on systemic issues in contemporary African society. His literary projects include the African mythology novel Reborn: The River of Girls and several works of serialized fiction exploring identity, culture, and modern Ghanaian life.

Chief Tutu Baffour Asare Brownsy Williams writes regularly on education, governance, and pan-African affairs for Modern Ghana and associated platforms.

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