Educational Thin-Tank Group are Rabble-Rousers'

I get sick when intellectuals of the NDC ‘hardened-hearts’ stock

open their mouths to try to prove the impossibility of the free SHS concept which

has become a flagship campaign programme for NPP and their indefatigable Presidential

candidate - Akufo Ado, for the December 2012 polls.

Their arguments are certainly off course, way down into the Dodowa

forest or perhaps the KOGYAE and DIGYA forests in the Afram Plains — but they

still become so aggressive and emotional trying to convince people with their

nothingness. They make the subject sound

so complicated but it is simple. Their

objective is to confuse and diffuse the issues

to win undeserved votes from our

unfortunate illiterate siblings.

I am reminded of similar

arguments from NDC ‘hardened hearts’ during the challenge on Gulfstream

Aircraft purchase during NDC 2 administration and recently the $10b STX obnoxious

housing deal. Alban Bagbin, Tony Aidoo and the evil dwarfs and greedy bastards

did use big English couched in verbosity, sophistry and deceit to persuade

people including Parliament to accept those stinking deals. They also did it

with Woyomegate- a simple technical mistake on their part which they have succeeded

to let it look legally complicated- and thereby succeeded to pay Woyome several

millions of dollars from the treasury for no work done.

They are at it again. They are at it again using their meaningless

big English to

try to retain power and thereby scuttle the commencement of Akufo

Ado’s great SHS free

policy including the redefinition of the basic school concept

to totally embrace Kindergatin-Primary School-JHS-SHS schooling for our future

children.

Last Friday, there was a news item in the papers thus:

‘’Free SHS is not attainable – University Lecturer

Ghana First, an academic think tank

of some university lecturers, on Friday said infrastructure in the country’s

Junior High Schools (JHS) and Senior High Schools (SHS) is woefully inadequate

to accommodate the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) free SHS policy.

At a press conference in Accra addressed by

Dr. Ebenezer Kofi Hayford, lecturer, Department of Earth Science University of

Ghana said the number of pupils from JHS ready to enter the SHS is more than

the existing facilities can accommodate.

This year alone, 376,859 candidates sat for

the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) to fill 175,000 vacancies in

the existing SHS schools nationwide.

The vacancy available leaves a surplus of

201,000 pupils who will not be able to gain admission into the SHS.

These 201,000 are unable to enter the SHS

not because of cost but because of infrastructure deficit which includes

laboratory space, dining halls space, ICT centres----‘’

I dare say Dr Hayford was talking about irrelevancies here. Dr. Hayford

highlighted

on infrastructural inadequacies in education, so what? Are Dr Hayford and his group

also going to use sophistry and intellectual dishonesty to bamboozle and confuse

issues? Dr Hayford must answer the following

questions:-

1. A Why can’t Akufo Ado start

free SHS with the 175,000 students - which the infrastructure can currently

support—out of the 376,859 candidates? -- using Dr. Hayford’s figures in the quote

in paragraph 3 above?

2. B Why should it be that if

free SHS is to be pursued, then Akufo Ado should take on board all the 376,859

candidates at a go even when the infrastructure can’t support the venture?

3. C Why can’t new infrastructural provisions be progressively effected year

by year until we are able to accommodate all the BECE candidates as required?

4. D Was Nkrumah‘s free SHS scheme in the North in the ‘60s, frustrated by

lack of infrastructure at that time?

5. E. Did Nkrumah wait for all

necessary infrastructure to be built before the start of the scheme, then?

In his press conference, Dr.

Hayford made emphatic pronouncement on

the financial cost of providing the necessary infrastructure to provide

desirable accessibility and quality in free education scheme thus; -- ‘’There

are 511 SHS country-wide. Now Greater Accra (with 45 SHS) carries 9.2 per cent

of the cost. The nation-wide projection will therefore cost 1,370,000,000 (1.37

billion) Ghana cedis.’’

I ask again, so what? Dr. Hayford, why are you frightened with 1.3b

Gh cedis? NDC attempted to sink a

whopping $10b of our oil money into the infamous STX housing and the present

parliament approved of it? Did it please you, Dr. Hayford? Was that a prudent

investment?

Dr Hayford and Prof Lewis

Enu-Kwesi must compare 1.3b Gh cedis oil money expenditure into infrastructure

for free SHS education and $10b oil money expenditure into STX housing and come

again. The Ghana

First, Educational Think -Tank Group does not impress at all, just seeming like

a rabble-rousing Group.

John Yawose