Mahama can’t implement free SHS

A former Minister of Education under the erstwhile Kufuor administration, Professor Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi, says he doubtful that the Mahama-led NDC government can implement free senior high school education in Ghana as touted in the 2015 budget.

According to the former Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, the NDC government has no sustainable plan for implementing free SHS which has been the major campaign promise of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo.

He told DAILY GUIDE in an interview on Thursday in reaction to the budget statement that the NDC was just rushing to implement the policy without adequate preparations in terms of funding and a thought-through strategy to make it work.

He challenged the government to provide its sources of funding for the proposed project.

The former Techiman North MP said the NPP has got all the plans under its sleeves that will ensure a successful implementation of free SHS.

Prof Ameyaw-Akumfi said the Mahama administration, in a rush to implement the policy, will collapse it just as it has done to the school feeding programme and the capitation grant, which had been in arrears for so many months, among other programmes.

Touching on government’s claim of having constructed 50 community day senior high schools, Prof Ameyaw-Akumfi threw a challenge to the government to show Ghanaians where those so-called schools have been constructed.

He indicated that his investigations had established that only five of the schools are currently under construction due to lack of sustainable sources of funding.

On plans to convert polytechnics into technical universities, Prof Ameyaw-Akumfi said there is a provision under the Polytechnic Act for them to run degree programmes and even master’s programmes.

“They [the polytechnics] don’t have to carry the name of technical university before they can run degree programmes,” he stated. “What is important is the provision of the facilities they need to run their degree programmes.”

The educationist bemoaned the continuous decline of quality education in Ghana at all levels. In his assessment, the government’s neglect of teachers in the country and inadequate funding in the educational sector had been the causes of the declining educational standards in Ghana.

He advised government that the quality of education would continue to suffer as long as it continued to ignore teachers, while citing the current tango between government and teachers on the 2nd tier pension funds as a case in point.