[ad_1]
General News on Friday, April 12, 2019
Source: citinewsroom.com
2019-04-12
Former President John Dramani Mahama
Former President John Mahama said that the government's apparently apparent lack of a free high school policy would undermine the credibility of secondary education in the country's public sector.
He predicted that parents will soon begin to lose confidence in the public high school system due to the loss of quality with the introduction of the free SHS program.
"What we do with this huge influx into the secondary school system [due to the free SHS programme]… will affect the quality of public schools. And we will soon find a system in which people lose confidence in public schools and everyone will pay to go to private high schools. This is the danger we are talking about. "
The Akufo-Addo government was quick to implement the Free SHS program after winning power in the 2016 elections.
Politics was a promise that the party announced in 2008.
The Free SHS policy has been accompanied by an increase in enrollments despite concerns about the quality of education received.
It only takes seven months for Free SHS education to begin. In the early years, approximately 400,000 people begin school in the 2017-2018 school year.
The policy stipulated that the government absorb all the costs of public secondary education, as recipients do not have to pay admission fees, exam fees and utilities, among others.
Concerns were exacerbated when the government put in place the dual track system to address the infrastructure deficit in the various upper secondary schools.
Mr Mahama has always been in favor of a more gradual approach to free secondary education, which his administration had put in place before 2016.
Now, Mr Mahama has also said that spending on secondary education is far too important at the expense of other sectors.
An amount of 1.682 billion GHc was earmarked for the implementation of the Free SHS program in the 2019 budget.
"If you spend most of your money in secondary education and less in technical and elementary education, your education system is defective," Mahama said.
He added, "I can tell you that your student loan system has been canceled because there is no money to fund it because all the money goes to Free SHS. That's why I say that the calf should never be bigger than the thigh, because if the calf is bigger than the thigh, it is sick. "
Source link
