– Why free education matters to our nation’s future

It is refreshing to realise that educationists have started to rationalise and engage with Nana Akufo-Addo’s new educational policy of redefining basic education and making it free. The President of Ashesi University, Dr Patrick Awuah has been quoted as having “criticised” the NPP flagbearer Nana Akufo Addo's policy of free Junior and Senior High Schools saying the idea is not well thought through. However a careful analysis of what the eminent educationist was saying shows that he does not in principle disagree with the fact that Ghanaian children deserve free education up to senior secondary school level. The headline is a bit misleading because as it turned out his suggestion did not turn out to be a criticism but rather and offer of opinion as to whether all families should benefit from it or “wealthy families should be made to bear the full cost of the wards education while that of poor families can be subsidized by the government.”

Dr. Awuah has a point of opinion which I personally disagree with in part. I agree with his opinion that wards of poor families should be subsidised and I will go to say that the government ought to absorb their school fees fully if they are in public schools. Nana’s free education concept, he has said, is primarily for public schools with emphasis of moving away from boarding schools to improving day school within the community. However Dr. Awuah’s argument for wealthy parents to absorb “full cost of their wards’ education” cannot be fully acceptable from my estimation. I believe that every Ghanaian child matters irrespective of their circumstances and none should be discriminated against by the circumstances of their birth. It is true that wealthy parents are realistically more able to cater for their wards and they are the ones who are most likely to take their children to private schools. The NPP as a party has a principle of believing that the private sector is the engine of growth and the government has to provide an enabling environment as well as close partnership with them to move growth forward. This is applicable in the educational sector also. To completely discriminate against this sector just simply because it educates the children of wealthy families requires rethinking. In a society where personal incomes are very difficult to determine it is going to be very difficult to determine who a wealthy family is, except to say that children who attend private schools should bear the full cost of education. As a party the NPP is engaging the private schools to ascertain what government can do to help them improve on the quality of education they are currently providing for our children. School fees are going up astronomically. Parents who used to pay 150 Gh cedis for all kinds of fees for SHS in 2008 are today paying 300 Gh cedis. The so called wealthy parents are finding it difficult to absorb fully the rise cost of school fees. We are actively going to push more children into the sciences such as ICT, Technical and Vocational subjects with the intention of shifting the balance to 60:40. The challenge is for the private schools to do same and incentives will be offered to schools that specialise in these sciences. No one is saying private school education should also be completely free, however for every cedi the government spends on the child in the public sector a certain percentage should be spent on the child in the private schools that absorb children into sciences.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair once remarked that “A politician who does not try within his principles to do the best for [the] child is a politician who is in danger of losing touch with humanity” (Blair, 1996). The NPP flagbearer has on several platforms promised to redefine basic education to reach the SHS level as well as make it free at the JHS and SHS levels if elected. This policy has been derided by the present government and some of its associates as unworkable as they have neither got the capacity nor the expertise to implement it. When the then candidate Kufuor in 2000 promised to lift the Free Compulsory Basic Education (FCUBE) from the walls of our Constitution and make it a reality, the then candidate Mills derided the idea in Tamale on his campaign trail and said it was unworkable. We are all living witnesses to what President Kufuor was able to do in the implementation of FCUBE through the introduction of the Capitation Grant, Girl Child Education and the introduction of the School Feeding Programme.
The NPP flagbearer believes that good education confers enormous rights and privilege to benefactors and he passionately wants those rights and privileges to be extended much wider than it has been extended now – extended to the very roots of our society. Unlike the NDC who use their definition of social justice to stamp on individual freedoms and private enterprise and create barriers to their economic success, the NPP believes that education is the clearest link between social justice and economic prosperity. The NPP believes that government should invest in education in order to sustain the economic upward trend that the nation aspires. This it cannot do on its own without the complement of the private educational sector of the economy. The party’s flagbearer leads on this belief that every Ghanaian child matters and is capable of achieving better giving the right kind of support through education. It is the social responsibility of government to provide that kind of support. According to Lev Vygotsky, every child’s level of proximal development lies between what the child is capable of achieving on his or her own and what the child can achieve with support and encouragement from adults. In each child there is a private hope and dream which, when fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation. This is achievable only through education and only deliverable through of our teachers who undoubtedly carry out the job of teaching proudly but with less and less recognition and reward. But many of our good teachers, parents and the general public know that without some pressure to change the ethics of education, this “zone of proximal development” will not be attained
Delivering free and good quality education in order for the child to fulfil their God-given dreams is a sine qua non in every nation, not least Ghana and for over half a century governmental efforts in realising this has not been sustainable. Dr. Nkrumah realised the differential gap between the north and south of Ghana and sought to bridge it educationally by introducing the Northern Scholarship. The Northern Scholarship (NS) was abused and battered over the years so President Kufuor while maintaining the NS introduced the Capitation Grant across board to alleviate the fee paying burden on parents up to the JHS level. The NDC in all the years that they have been in government since 1992 to present have added no value as far as free education is concerned. One would have expected Professor Mills, being an educationist himself would have stepped away from the NDC misuse of social justice in education to rethink the delivery of education. However he has continued with the age old principle of “let’s churn out of the mill” so that we can continue to rule with propaganda over youngsters who lack basic functional skills to survive in life and who then will rely on our promises and handouts. The NDC is intentionally stifling the education of our children in order to perpetuate the culture of dependency.
The purpose of education is to serve a nation in its socio economic transformation and also to provide opportunities for social mobility among its citizens especially the youth. As a party the NPP’s primary objective is to create a society of opportunities by intensifying radically our efforts in pursuing the transformation and modernisation of our national economy, so that it could create jobs and prosperity for the broad mass of our people on the basis of social justice, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. A new society of opportunities, as we envisage, means establishing a system of education that provides the very best of training and skills for every citizen, including a public school system that creates a safety net for its youth to have access to opportunities in life.
Nana Akufo-Addo is taking a step in the right direction and we ought to give him the audience and space to realise the dream of our children. A redefined basic education which is free would have the practical advantages of a full roll of the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE). Within which the government will pursue a vigorous agenda aimed at setting outcomes for every child in the country to ensure that every Ghanaian child matters. These outcomes will include good nutrition in schools through the School Feeding Programme, Free and compulsory basic education up to SHS level so that children stay safe in school. The “Teachers First” agenda will ensure an improved teacher training and motivation so that they can help children to achieve and enjoy through curriculum innovation as well as new teaching styles. Children then will enjoy economic well-being through our economic transformation policies so that they can make positive contribution to future society.

My vote will go for Nana Akufo-Addo’s educational policy because as an educationist, I believe that Government has a responsibility to ensure that all its citizens have the right to have relevant skills and opportunities to drive our socio-economic transformation. This includes the right to education and training beyond basic school; preparation for employment, decent living accommodation and sustainable communities, access to transport and material goods. This is the role of government in ensuring that as children learn to become useful to society, the government keeps its side of the bargain to put in economic measures to ensure a better future for the young adult.

Kwesi Atta-Krufi Hayford
Member- NPP Manifesto Sub-Committee on Education