Review of flagship initiatives: Don’t mess with Free SHS, says Kwame Pianim
An economist named Kwame Pianim has encouraged the government, in its efforts to examine key initiatives, not to “touch” the free senior high school (SHS) policy.
He demanded that spending be reduced in less important areas and that money be directed into relevant economic sectors.
“This little country has more ministers than the UK and the US, and each minister has around two automobiles, which is absurd. In a nation of 30 million people with 16 regions, that is absurd. Let’s reduce spending, assess our ex-gratia, and only distribute it once. Additionally, we need to reduce the number of ministers, he added.
Pianim made this statement during a television debate on the subject of “IMF DEAL: The Case For Review Of Flagship Programmes”.
As part of the $3 billion IMF bailout deal, the government recently informed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that it will evaluate all flagship initiatives.
Pianim said that since education is such a powerful life-transformer, everyone should be able to take advantage of the Free SHS Programme.
“Let’s ensure that kids receive a good education, that it is of high calibre, and that instructors are fairly compensated… If we spend it there, we won’t have any money left over to construct a cathedral, buy people V-8, or fly ministers first class when they can fly economy, he warned.
He said that the government’s decision to go back to the IMF was a chance for the nation to learn from its past errors.
“Since gaining independence, we’ve visited the IMF several times,” he continued. Now is the moment for Ghanaians to sit down and consider what they have been doing incorrectly that won’t land us back at the IMF.
The government has to find measures to cut waste in public spending, according to Dr. John Ampontuah Kumah, deputy minister of finance.
The inefficiencies that produce waste are what we must all concentrate on, he added, in order to reduce the workload. “We must address the items that drag and are repeated, the ghost names,” he said.
He refuted the claim that the implementation of Free SHS had reduced the calibre of instruction at that level, noting that Ghana had outperformed West Africa in terms of performance quality in the most recent West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) Report from the West African Examinations Council (WAEC).
The requests from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for a review of the Free SHS policy, according to Dr. Clement Abas Apaak, Deputy Ranking Member of the Parliament’s Education Committee, had nothing to do with the amount of money being put into the programme but rather with difficulties with its execution.
The Free SHS policy, he added, “is a fantastic policy, but we feel that it still continues to be plagued by implementation issues, which is why we are calling for the review.
According to him, several academics had expressed worry about the low calibre of SHS graduates enrolling in postsecondary institutions and some had even suggested the creation of admission exams.