One of the fiercest criticisms mounted against the Free SHS policy introduced by this government in September 2017 has been its universality for every child in public senior high schools.

The argument has been that it is manifestly unfair for the children of the rich to have their fees paid for by the state. “Let those who can afford to pay!”, has been the chorus.

Fourth Estate:

The recent public discussion of the issues surrounding the Scholarship Secretariat following an expose by the Fourth Estate media platform has cemented, in my view, one of the arguments some of us have made over the years against means-testing.

The Fourth Estate’s release indicated a number of beneficiaries related to or associated with some major players in the political establishment under this government, fueling the narrative that scholarships have been hijacked by connected persons to the detriment of those who genuinely need them.

If my understanding is correct, the number of foreign scholarship beneficiaries published pales into quite some insignificance relative to the total number of foreign scholarship beneficiaries. But in the same breath, I appreciate that even a few beneficiaries who do not merit it displace a few others who do. Most certainly, some of the names published have no business anywhere near a government scholarship. But I hope the secretariat publishes its full list of beneficiaries.

SHS systemic abuses:

Fundamentally, an argument some of us have made in support of the universality of Free SHS has been that as soon as you make it the exclusive preserve of poor children, those who do not need it are likely to muscle in and elbow the deserving out. History offers a useful guide.

The Cocoa Marketing Board's (CMB) scholarships of the 1980s quickly became a farce, where the rich and the elite effectively hijacked this scheme through their various networks for their pampered children, to the detriment of the poor children of cocoa workers who could not afford secondary education.

Again, until 2018, the 30% catchment policy by which communities in the catchment areas of the top SHS were guaranteed a percentage of admissions into those schools was grossly abused and hijacked by connected parents, influential alumni, traditional rulers, clergymen and politicians, among others, to admit their children or wards who had failed to get into those schools on merit, to the detriment of the children from the poor and disadvantaged communities in which these schools are located and for whom the policy was meant.

Even with the shift from a 30% catchment in 2018 towards a 30% equity policy targeted at children from public JHS who invariably come from disadvantaged backgrounds anywhere in the country, many elites rushed to register their children in public schools to write the BECE so they could benefit from this policy, which was targeted at the poor and marginalized.

Fundamentally, therefore, a rather undesirable streak pervades our public space, where the little that is meant for the poor is hijacked by the elite and the connected, using their various fancy networks. Make Free SHS only available to the poor and many of those who can afford will elbow them out of that space and keep the poor out, especially in our top schools.

Pre-tertiary education is hugely central to a country’s development and a basic amount of education for every citizen is vital. When the child of the rich or those with means becomes a medical doctor, teacher, policeman, or civil servant, the whole of society stands to benefit. After all, the rich also pay taxes (indeed, more taxes) to fund public education, so I see no gross injustice with their children benefiting from the same.

Poor mechanisms:

Historically, whenever access to a valuable thing (for instance, places in top senior high schools and recruitment into plum public establishments) has been understandably limited, the connected tend to invade and occupy these spaces through ‘protocol’. It was the same during the ‘kalabule’ times of the late 1970s with respect to ‘chits’ for import licences as well as ‘essential commodities’ in the face of shortages. The famine years of the 1980s saw no difference in this phenomenon.

We have not yet established sufficiently robust mechanisms to ensure that if means-testing is introduced in FSHS, it will not go down the route the CMB scholarships and other facilities took. The poor will therefore have a fighting chance of accessing senior high school education only if it is kept universally free.

It is impossible to make foreign scholarships available to everyone who seeks them and qualifies for them, as we have done with Free SHS since 2017. To address some of the issues around this, it should be a matter of standard practice each year for the Scholarship Secretariat to publish a list of its beneficiaries on its website. We should know exactly who has benefitted from scholarships in our names.

That is the first of several possible steps towards transparency.