Source: Onuaonline.com
George Akilapa Sawyerr, an educationist and Professor of Law, has described as “bad and unintelligent”, the implementation of a blanket free senior high school policy.
The former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana says there are many Ghanaians who can afford their children’s school fees, and should be allowed to pay for the state to cater for only those who genuinely can’t afford.
According to him, although it would be difficult to detect those who genuinely require that support, he says it the best option the government should have employed in implementing the policy.
He explains not much analysis was done before implementing the policy, saying that despite “the notion of a free education” being “a laudable one, the pursuit of that objective without costing, without working out the lines of movement, without working out the impacts on other parts of the economy, very carefully, for me, is a failure of policy, not the objective.
The former president of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences says he does not understand why the state should pay for the education of his child in senior high school when some children at the basic level are studying under trees.
“The notion that my children under this system could go to a boarding school and get free food, free everything when there are other younger students under trees. How does that make sense? I can afford to pay for my children’s boarding and so on? I won’t like it but I can afford to pay, why would you give me that concession when the budget that you raised for that could support people who don’t have the basic desks to sit on?” he quizzed.
He averred that an outright dismissal of the policy “can affect who goes for secondary school education because some can’t afford it without help so give them help.
“But a blanket free education for everybody which you can’t afford it, not only for me, is bad policy, it’s just unintelligent, to put it blankly,” he told Accra-based JoyNews Saturday, June 22, 2024.
Source: www.onuaonline.com
