I traveled to an African country at the invitation of an educational institute to interact with pupils of some selected basic schools. The country is one of the pioneers of the introduction of Completely Free Secondary Education on the continent of Africa.
I first visited a primary school, and there was this teacher who had a nasal problem and spoke through his nose. It happened that he was taking his pupils through numbers, and wrote them on the chalkboard for them to repeat after him.
“One,” he said.
“One,” the pupils responded through their noses.
“Two,” he continued.
“Two,” the children responded the same way.
The teacher thought his pupils were making fun of him, and so he paused and said, “Children, stop! It’s sickness!”
The children obeying a previous instruction by their teacher to repeat whatever he said, shouted through their noses, “Children stop! It’s sickness!” The teacher was livid, and I was morbidly intrigued.
My next tour took me to a middle school where I was given the opportunity as a visiting author to interact with the pupils. I decided to test their knowledge on “question and answer tags”. I gave an example: “The moon goes round the earth, doesn’t it?” And I asked them to give me more examples. One boy stood up and said: “Sir, you like yam, yamin’t?” Another shouted, “John likes food, foodn’t it?”
I whispered, “Ayeka”. Immediately, a girl near me stood up and asked, “Ayeka it?” Anyway, don’t blame those poor children; question and answers tags could be somehow challenging at times. During the Supreme Court electoral petition case, even someone with a PHD against his name repeatedly made some terrible answer tag errors. Kikikikiki, please don’t ask me who the one is, you and I were not there abi. I don’t want any trouble oo. If you want to know the truth just go for the records, it is there yageni, yageni.
That notwithstanding, I think the children’s poor academic performance could be blamed on their country’s rush in implementing a Completely Free Secondary Education instead of a progressively free one. Countries which rushed to implement that type of educational policy are in serious trouble. These include Uganda and Kenya. There is increased access, but education standards have incredibly fallen, something acknowledged in a 2010 Overseas Development Institute report.
In 2007, Uganda became the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to introduce this kind of educational policy. Even though enrollment shot up significantly, about 69% within the first year, the quality of education has disturbingly plummeted because of insufficient teachers, infrastructure and equipment to meet the growing classroom population.
Ghana would have faced similar challenges if a certain political party had won power and introduced their ill-equipped and post-haste Absolutely Free Secondary Education, because the policy was not well-thought-out. A BBC interview where someone in an answer to how much the scheme would cost, said, “Cost, cost, cost,” and could not give any figure is a clear justification of my point.
Ghana, under the visionary leadership of President John Dramani Mahama has made a terrific judgement by going for a carefully considered and well planned Progressively Free Secondary Education alongside the building of 200 new day Senior High Schools in addition to the provision of equipment and personnel. He knows that the best legacy that a society can bestow onto its youth is a good education, and doesn’t want to compromise at all. This is cutting-edge leadership; this is discerning leadership. This is leadership par excellence!
The programme which will benefit an estimated number of 320,488 day students of public Senior High Schools begins next month, and government is spending a whopping 12.2 million Ghana Cedis for the 2015/16 academic year. The fees to be absorbed are: Examination Fees, Library Fees, Entertainment Fees, SRC Dues, Science development Fees, Science and Maths Quiz Fees, Sports Fees, Culture Fees and Internet Fees.
President Mahama is indubitably the quintessential president – humble, decisive, bold, intelligent and innovative. Our love for him must be unrequited! We should not let him slip through our fingers else posterity will never forgive us. We are in an era of transformation, and it’s time for Ghana to shine again! Let’s help the young man from Bole to succeed!
