Assessing Ghana’s Free SHS Education Policy

Minister of Education, Ghana, Dr Matthew Opoku-Prempeh

Kumasi, Ghana, August 25, 2018//-I want to join the people of Ghana who are rejoicing now due to the timely intervention of Nana Akuffo Addo’s led-government’s introduction of free Senior High School education nation in the country.

High admission requirements including huge admission and feeding fees made secondary education inaccessible to the poor. This great achievement by Nana Addo cannot be swept under the carpet. It is worth celebrating.

Education is the bedrock for social and economic development of any country. It takes ages to transform a nation into a developed and a prosperous one; this cannot be achieved without education.

Nelson Mandela, a former president of South Africa said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Literacy is indeed important but, there are several factors which need to be seen in order to get the desired results.

Can the good people of Ghana imagine what would have happened to the over 120,000 Ghanaian youth that would have dropped from school if the Free SHS had not been implemented?

What are the policies that the government has put in place for the benefiters of the free SHS policy who are unable to continue to the highest educational level after SHS due to one reason or the other?

We cannot deny the fact that financial constraints and current economic hardship are obstacles that are obstructing the enrollment of students in the existing tertiary institutions especially in this era where free tertiary education has not yet been promised by our political leaders.

As stated by Albert Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid”, it would be worth stating that initiating policies with the intention of making formal education accessible to the youth in the country without taking into account the less academically endowed is completely inappropriate.

What about the class of people who are more endowed in technical skills than academic knowledge? The mere fact that majority of Ghanaian youth are currently having access to free basic and secondary education does not completely guarantee Ghana’s socio-economic development.

Moreover, formal education should not be regarded as the only asset for national development but also helping the youth to develop upon their god giving talents, skills and potentials aimed at taking Ghana to the highest level in social and economic development.

The inability of Ghana’s educational system to train youth with technical skills and those from financially challenged backgrounds has resulted into youth joblessness (unemployment) and increasing incidence of social ills among the youths such as prostitution, arm robbery, internet fraud, etc in their quest to earn a living for themselves.

This call for immediate and urgent revision of our senior high school educational system to ensure that a considerable number of active and exuberant youths are massively equipped with requisite skills and training.

Though the standards of education in Ghana have improved in recent years, there is still shortage of vocational and technical opportunities.

Gideon Baffo Gyasi,Geomatic Engineering Department,
KNUST,

Most of the focus in Ghana’s education sector has been driven towards academic subjects (read, write and arithmetic only). In a country like Ghana where most people cannot afford tertiary education, it is important that the set up vocational and technical training institutions and avenues.

The success of every country’s economy is based on employment competitiveness. The skill of the labour force is essential to economic growth. An improvement in the technical and vocational field will provide employment for the youth, generate revenue for the government, enhance production in our local industries and improve the country’s overall economy.

In addition to the establishment of vocational and technical schools, the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural development should dialogue and introduce indigenous curriculum education into our academic syllabus which will serve as an avenue for the youth to acquire skills and training to enable us develop our local industries.

Acquiring knowledge in indigenous technology such as soap making, beads making, kente weaving, basketries, batik making, etc in addition to the academic knowledge will enable the youth (especially benefiters of the free education policy who are unable to afford tertiary education) to acquire skills to work effectively in our local and rural industries to add more value to our locally manufactured products.

In conclusion, I fervently believe that if the government makes it a point to establish more technical and vocational institutions and adopt indigenous curriculum into our academic syllabus in addition to our already existing educational policies, the educational sector will be more better off.

It will thereby train the youth to contribute their quota meaningful to the forward march of the country.  .

By Gideon Baffo Gyasi,Geomatic Engineering Department,

KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana, gideonbaffo@gmail.com

+233557339081

 

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