QUALITY EDUCATION AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES – EVERYBODY WANT TO BE SOMEBODY
First, kudos to the Akufo Addo government for implementing the ‘free’ senior high school (SHS) programme. Some say it was reckless. Others say it was courageous. Whichever side you stand his will to power through – Nietzsche – with the system is admirable. Though desirable, conditions are seldom perfect. I must say that the lack of proper planning including an inbuilt reviewing mechanism that would have served as early warning system (in the absence of a pilot programme) and brought stakeholders to resolve issues was a huge let down. The second term of the Akufo Addo government, 4 years after the implementation, could have been used to review and right the tethering issues. However, the posture and behaviour of the government, particularly the past education minister, was appalling, to say the least. The minister was not only mediocre but indifferent to the emerging problems. He was more hot air than substance.
All said, I have been a strong advocate of an education system that is of high quality and promote equal opportunities for all citizens. I have always thought that a sound means tested system would be a gateway for achieving such goals. See my previous writings. However, we have not yet been able to devise such a system. Therefore, any attempts to truncate the current ‘free’ SHS system would undermine equal opportunities for the majority of Ghanaian children. We all know that most of the high performing senior high schools tend to be the boarding ones, often of the legacy kind, and are unevenly spread across the country. And that Ghanaian boarding schools are avenues for building social capital and also bridge tribal/ethnic differences. Making only day schools or the non-boarding bit of SHS ‘free’ would lead to a two tier senior secondary school system: one for those privileged who can afford boarding and the benefits it comes with (including social capital) and the other for the ‘mmobrowas’ banished to day schools/day students. This will widen the already growing social inequality and threaten the foundation of a stable and prosperous Ghana. Some say there is no country in the world that offer free boarding school (I don’t know since I haven’t done any research into this) but we need to ask ourselves some soul searching questions. Do such countries have their high performing ones accessible to the few because of their location and connections? Do such countries have state boarding schools? Do they have similar ethnic and socio-cultural nomenclature? Are our legacy school, that happens to also be our best performing schools, easily accessible to children from all corners of the country (from Lambussie through Nkwanta South to Jomoro)? These are hard questions that should guide the proposed national SHS review conference. Quality and equity shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.
A new approach that encourages science education (STEM) at the secondary and tertiary levels including better trained and incentivised teachers should be considered. Any wonder why China’s development outpaced India’s contrary, to the now defunct believe that they would develop at equal pace? China championed universal access to primary and secondary education including vocational education and had higher proportion of science and technology university graduates. Whilst Chinese students chose science and engineering degrees at university, Indian (like their British colonised Ghanaian counterparts) followed the humanities and social sciences (including business administration or law) pathway. This drove China’s quick and seamlessly transition from an agrarian economy to a manufacturing and industrial one. E.g. from the 1980s to 2010s science and engineering degrees accounted for 80% (in the 1980s) to 40% (2010s) of degrees awarded in China. In India it was 5% (in the 1980s) and 20% (2010s). I blame (need to blame someone) the science teachers I encountered at secondary school for cutting short my science expedition. Recently I have become an ardent advocate of science and technology education, ever since I discovered the work and writings of the brilliant Richard Feynman.