Suspend the Ghana smart schools project immediately as it is wasteful and unsustainable

The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has launched a new educational project, the Ghana Smart Schools Project (one laptop per student). This project is aimed at providing senior high school students with one laptop each—one student, one laptop.

A couple of weeks ago, the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, also launched the Ghana Apprenticeship Program, which is aimed at providing 50,000 students with competency-based skills for employment.

Over the last few weeks, I have gathered evidence across senior high schools in ten regions of Ghana, and I have come to the conclusion that Ghana’s secondary school education is troubled. I can tell you that the One Laptop per Student (Ghana Smart Schools) project is a flawed initiative. There are senior high schools in Ghana that do not have computer laboratories or laptops.

Many school heads have confided in me that there was little or no consultation with school heads ahead of the announcement of the One Laptop per Student project. The question we are asking is: when will all the rest of the thousands of students in the rest of the over 600 schools also receive their laptops? When these laptops are stolen, broken, or expired, who will be replacing or fixing them?

There is evidence to show that there are schools that have computer laboratories but are not fully resourced to meet the demands of the student population. Some schools have computer labs, but the computers are broken down. Some have to visit sister schools to conduct ICT exams as a result of dysfunctional computer labs.

We know that there are schools that are reeling under unlimited constraints with regard to paying utility and water bills. The headmaster of Mfantsipim was in the news recently, courting the support of parents to help pay the school’s mounting bills because the government had defaulted in making its statutory payments.

Only last week, it was announced that senior high schools in Ghana owe ECG over GHC45 million in electricity bills. The government was only able to pay GHC5 million after the ECG threatened a mass disconnection exercise. Would this poorly thought-through initiative not add up to the defaulting electricity bills of these schools?

There are reports of second-cycle institutions facing food shortages. There are many schools with several uncompleted projects, including GETFUND projects, which have been abandoned. There are a lot of blocks that have been left to rot and dining halls that have been converted into classrooms as a result of these crying calls for infrastructure.

We were in this country when teachers were supplied with the same laptops. Ask them what the current state of those laptops is. They have broken down. I want to ask: Who is handling the distribution of these laptops? Would it be the same company that supplied teachers with laptops that are no longer in use?

I argue that under Ghana’s present difficult circumstances and looking at the current state of our senior high schools, the government must immediately suspend the Ghana Smart Schools (one laptop per student) project.

Instead, the government must use the same resources to set up computer laboratories and/or retool the existing ones in all 700 senior high schools across the country so that every high school student has an equal chance of accessing computer-based education, rather than a few. This would ensure greater control and monitoring of the project under the management of the various second-cycle institutions.