- EDUCATION
The President claimed that he had made the biggest expansion to secondary education in this country. Ladies and gentlemen, when the then vice presidential candidate, John Mahama, dismissed the Free SHS the NPP proposed, he said it would not work because, according to him,
the most important thing was first to increase access. When he got his Road to Damascus moment, he saw the wisdom in Free SHS, and said he would build 200 day secondary schools before introducing Free SHS. The President has commissioned FOUR of those promised 200 day secondary schools. If it has taken him four years to commission 4 schools, at this rate, it appears we would have wait a very long time for the 200 schools to materialise. And in the meantime, parents are having great difficulty in sending their children to secondary school because of their inability to pay the high fees involved. The original promise of Free SHS, which was the subject of a launch with great fanfare for secondary day schools, has also not materialised. As we speak, government is paying only GH¢114 out of the GH¢403 of children’s school fees. Is this the free SHS he promised? Further, he had promised that the School Feeding programme would be expanded to cover all basic schools in the country. This promise has been abandoned. Capitation grant is in arrears, and even mere chalk in the classroom has become a scarce commodity in our public schools. The Polytechnics and Universities have been in constant uproar over the non-payment of various government financial obligations. Mr President, this is no way to run such a vital sector as Education.
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