A Senior Law lecturer at the University of Ghana Law School, Dr. Raymond Atuguba has revealed that, the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) will scrap the Free Senior High School (SHS) programme should the party win any subsequent election.
Dr. Atuguba who served as an Executive Secretary to former President John Dramani Mahama therefore called on the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) government to ensure that legislation is passed to prevent the policy from being cancelled or altered should a new party come into office.
“Let’s say that if NDC wins 2020 or 2024, you know they can cancel free SHS, you know that? What sense will that make? But right now without a binding national development plan, they can do that.
“With a binding national development plan, once you put in the plan that every government must work progressively towards free SHS, then no government can scrap the policy,” Dr. Atuguba said at a constitution review conference at Dodowa on Friday, November 24, 2017 on retooling the constitution from political to a developmental one.
According to him, with a law in place protecting the Free SHS policy, it would be difficult for any government to revise it as “a citizen can go to the supreme court and stop them.”
This is not the first time there have been concerns about the possible politicisation of policies in the educational sector.
The NPP administration, under President John Agyekum Kufuor, introduced the four-year Senior High School programme in 2007.
However, the NDC reverted to the 3-year system after it regained power in 2009.
Nevertheless, the Akufo-Addo government has indicated it is considering extending the length of secondary education to four years again.
The Minister of Planning, Professor Gyan Baffour, in September 2017, said the government was monitoring the three-year SHS system to inform a possible review back to four years.
The implementation of the Free SHS policy has also come under fire from members of the opposition who had pointed at the challenges faced by the government as a sign that the programme was ill-fated.
For instance, the Minority in Parliament has predicted a collapse of the policy in five years if the challenges plaguing the sector under the free SHS policy “are not fixed”.
Contributing to a debate on the floor of parliament on the 2018 budget statement, former Deputy Education Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, said, “the provision made for the policy in the 2018 budget is inadequate”.
“In 2018, we are talking about four terms, and yet you have provided for only ¢1.13 billion for free SHS; woefully inadequate.
“But Mr Speaker, what is more even troubling is that the whole of Ghana was expecting that the Budget under education would come with a Marshal Plan; a rescue package for the disaster, which this country is grappling with,” he said.
Meanwhile, former President John Dramani Mahama has called for a national dialogue on how to secure funding for the Free SHS programme.
He made this called when he addressed NDC members and sympathisers over the weekend in Tarkwa in the Western Region during the party’s unity walk as part of its reorganization and healing process.
Story: Atta Kwaku Boadi