Free SHS: Parents must pay for feeding - ISODEC

The Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) has suggested the need for parents to take up the feeding cost of their wards, so as to help lessen the cost to government under the Free Senior High School (SHS) education. 

According to the public policy research and advocacy organisation, the Free SHS programme is facing challenges because of the wrong approach. 

A press statement issued and signed by the Policy Analyst of ISODEC, Dr Steve Manteaw, on July 24, 2018, said instead of government finding a holistic solution for the challenges, it was rather compounding it with the introduction of the two-track SHS regime. 

To Dr Manteaw, “The speed with which government is trying to introduce the two-track SHS system i.e. two months from now, without any meaningful broad stakeholder consultations in consonance with the principles of good governance is worrying." 

According to ISODEC, the government’s attempt to rush through a two-track SHS regime, as its response to the infrastructure and funding challenges confronting the implementation of the Free SHS programme could have been averted if broader consultations were done. 

Read Also: Free SHS: Persons who can pay must be excluded - Ofori-Atta suggests

The government is facing challenges in financing its flagship education programme, the Free SHS and on Monday in a television interview, the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, suggested that persons who can afford to pay fees for the education of their wards be excluded from the Free SHS Programme.

"The issue of free education, I don't think its something that any of us can compromise on... It may be that there have to be changes in the way which we are administering it," Mr Ofori-Atta said on Citi TV.

Dr Manteaw believes that when parents cater for the feeding of their wards either in part or fully, it will provide the incentive for some to revert to the day stream.

He again suggested that one way the government could use to decongest the public SHSs is to pre-qualify some private High Schools with adequate facilities to participate in the Free SHS programme.

He was of the view that although the Akufo-Addo-led government has introduced several social interventions, many of the policies did not have blueprintsint to back their durability and consistency in policy implementation.

“We often get the impression that, some of these policies are not properly thought through. Several of them have no proper, and publicly available policy papers backing them,” Dr Manteaw said. 

Background

President Akufo-Addo on Sunday, July 22, this year, during his tour of the Northern Region announced that from September this year, the government will implement the double intake system for new entrants into public SHSs.

The system, he explained, would be a measure to address the growing number of students benefitting from the free SHS policy.

The double track system, according to President Akufo-Addo, would create room to accommodate the increase in enrolment.

Below is the statement

Press Statement:

Due diligence would have averted Free SHS crisis - ISODEC

The Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) has observed with deep concern, attempts by the government to rush through a two-track Senior High School regime, as its response to the infrastructure and funding challenges confronting the implementation of its flagship Free SHS programme. There is no doubt that the Akufo Addo-led government has good intentions for the poor, reflected in several laudable social protection programmes it has or plans to introduce. However, there is something fundamentally wrong with its approach to implementing some of these programmes.

First, the government makes very little effort to build consensus around its policies. This is evident from the inadequate public consultations it carries out ahead of its policy implementation, and which in the view of ISODEC, does not help in ensuring durability and consistency in policy implementation. Indeed such non-consultative approach to governance always comes with the risk of policy reversals by succeeding governments.

We often get the impression that, some of these policies are not properly thought through. Several of them have no proper, and publicly available policy papers backing them. Examples are: ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’, ‘One Constituency- One Million Dollars’, ‘Leveraging Ghana’s Bauxite for infrastructure’ and the ‘Free SHS’ programme. It is common knowledge that, the policy papers for these and other announced programmes are still being worked on.

The speed with which government is trying to introduce the two-track SHS system i.e. two months from now, without any meaningful broad stakeholder consultations in consonance with the principles of good governance is worrying. Some of us are beginning to ask ourselves whether or not the initiative’s blue print, assuming it exists, envisaged the congestion we are confronted with today, and whether or not it proposed ways of responding to it? If it did, then, was the two-track system one of the recommended responses? If so, why are we only now hearing about it?

The Way to Address Social Inequity

Because, the Free SHS blue print document has not yet been publicly disclosed, we will proceed to assume its purpose, and to suggest that, it is to address the problem of inequitable access to high school education. If this assumption is correct, then the current approach to achieving this objective may not be entirely appropriate. The way to address social inequity is not to accentuate it by creating equal access, Integrated Social Development Centre even for those who can afford, but rather to introduce affirmative action policies and programmes, which create opportunities exclusively for those that ordinarily cannot afford. It is this principle that actuated Ghana’s first president to introduce free secondary education (feeding grant) in the northern part of the country, and NOT across the whole country.

The suggestion has been made that assessing who qualifies for ‘free’ SHS and who does not, would be difficult. While that may be true, we should not lose sight of the fact that Free SHS could also serve as the platform for broadening the tax net, which eventually will make it easier to make such determination.
Proof of tax registration could be use as parents’ qualification to access this benefit. Beyond that, it is easy to start from the formal sector. All workers over and above a stated grade or salary threshold should be excluded from the programme. For the informal sector, as already indicated, proof of tax registration should form the initial qualification, and subsequently, turnover used to assess continued eligibility. All children coming from rural and urban poor communities and schools should automatically qualify for the programme. To encourage farming, we may even want to automatically qualify children of full-time farmers.
Source of the Classroom Congestion

At the inception of the Free SHS programme, ISODEC called for the accommodation of dissenting views.

We indeed went on to call for a national dialogue on the policy. These were however disregarded. It was clear to us that, the implementation of the policy was going to create problems that will eventually come back to threaten its sustainability.

Available information on 2017 SHS enrolment suggests that, though there has been some increase in senior high school enrolment since the inception of the Free SHS, the increase has been very marginal.

The question therefore is, how this marginal increase has led to so serious a congestion as to warrant the introduction of a two-track system? The evidence on the ground suggest that the congestion has been brought about not by enrolment numbers, but by majority of students, including those who under normal circumstances would have opted for day stream, now opting for boarding. The pressure therefore is on boarding facilities, compelling many schools to convert some of their classrooms into sleeping places, and therefore creating congestion in the classrooms.

The two-track system may therefore not be the best approach to decongest the boarding facility and the classrooms. As we’ve been told, that approach will require the recruitment of 10,000 new teachers, a recurrent cost that will further compound government’s liquidity challenges.

The Way Forward

Two main options in our view, could best decongest our schools and improve the quality of teaching and learning. First, is to make parents cater for the feeding of their wards either in part or fully. This will provide the incentive for some to revert to the day stream. Such policy measure should be accompanied by continuing with the NDC’s school infrastructure projects to continually expand classroom infrastructure.

The second option, which Uganda has implemented quite successfully, is to pre-qualify some private High Schools with adequate facilities to participate in the Free SHS programme. In fact we have done same in the health sector, where some private health facilities are accredited to provide NHIS sponsored services.

The lesson we draw from the path we have travelled so far is that, perhaps, if the government had modelled the input-output-impact of its policy, consulted more, a lot of the challenges besetting the programme today would have been averted. Maybe the Free SHS wouldn’t have been introduced in the first year. Bringing it on in the second or third year of the government’s current term would have provided the space and comfort to prepare for the challenges that confront us today.
Dr Steve Manteaw, Policy Analyst / Campaigns Coordinator