The prioritisation of 200 new SHS: How apt?

A lot has been said about the appointment of the “three wise men” to coordinate the implementation of President John Dramani Mahama’s “priority projects.” But barely anything has been said about the propriety or otherwise of tagging those projects as “priority.”

For the benefit of those who haven’t followed, President Mahama appointed Messrs Enoch Teye Mensah, Alban Bagbin and Cletus Avoka “to coordinate the implementation of Presidential priority projects relating to: the construction of 200 Senior High Schools (SHS), 10 Teacher Training Colleges and 1 Public University in the Eastern Region; the Development of ultra-modern Regional and Specialist Hospitals; and the development of new International and Regional Airports.”

It is okay to question the rightness of the President’s decision to appoint these personalities to coordinate these projects in view of the projects falling under specific Ministries such as Health, Education and Transport.

But let us do something different today. Let us subject the projects to needs-based analyses. I would begin with education; SHS education to be precise. SHS education regularly occupied the top of the nation’s discourse menu in the run-up to the 2012 elections. In fact, it was the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) promise of free SHS education that catalysed the near-daily SHS debate.

In the wisdom of President Mahama and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the nation would make wiser use of its resources if it pumped them into raising education infrastructure in the short to medium term. Free SHS education therefore ought to be a more long-term goal.

So the stage is perfectly set for us to assess the decision by President Mahama to include the construction of 200 new SHS in his priority list. I want to assume that priority here has no connotative meaning, i.e. it is not dependent on the availability of extra resources, and so on.

Pre-election proposal

Per independent analysis carried out by civil society groups in the pre-2012 general election period, the nation needs to build more than 200 new SHS across the country over the four-year period ahead of us, which is 2013-2016. In fact, 212 new SHS were prescribed, translating to one new SHS per district.

These figures were arrived at as a result of one of the initiatives I personally fell in love with during the 2012 electioneering period. It was the development of a document titled: “Civil Society Education Manifesto 2012.” As many of you may have read in the past, the document was the baby of the Child Rights International (CRI) and Action for Rural Education (ARE), which were partners in a STAR-Ghana funded project called the Education Agenda 2015 (EA-2015).

As part of the project, which was a 1-year advocacy campaign, consultations were held with various education sector actors including the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), The Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC), the Catholic Secretariat, and Presby Education across the country to gather inputs on what the way forward should be for the education sector – basic to tertiary.

The CRI and ARE also took the pains to research the Education Strategic Plan (ESP 2010-2020) and other documents on the education sector to draw inputs for the Civil Society Education Manifesto 2012.  

The partners further developed policy briefs on the various sub-sector issues. The essence of the extensive work was to secure the commitment of the various presidential candidates and their parties that they would undertake certain initiatives during their four-year tenure if they secured political power.

It is appropriate to observe that President Mahama’s NDC abstained from the process. It would be recalled that on October 8, 2012 Public Agenda reported the absence of the NDC from a forum organised by CRI and ARE where political party representatives agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the partners. It was the second time that the ruling party had excused itself from a political parties' forum on education organised by the CRI, ARE and their partners for the four parties with representation in Parliament at the time – the NDC, NPP, the People’s National Convention (PNC) and the Convention People’s Party (CPP).

212 was the number

And so throughout all their pre-election activities, as well as, in one of their policy briefs headed “Expanding Equitable Access to Quality Secondary Education: Civil Society Policy Proposals for 2013-2016,” the CRI and ARE recommended to the next administration to “Build 212 more day Senior High Schools to absorb the envisioned increase in SHS enrolment.”

They had calculated that with an initial capacity of 300 students per year group, some 84,000 more students can access secondary education.  This would increase the current enrolment in secondary schools by 42% from 202,339 to 286,339. They indicated that the proposal for 212 new day SHS worked up to one new day SHS per district, including the 42 newly created districts.

Connected to the issue was a recommendation for government to recruit and train more qualified teachers in SHS to address the worsening pupil-teacher ratio that will result from the building of an additional 212 schools.

I guess that is why President Mahama has added the construction of 10 Teacher Training Colleges to his “priority projects.”

So it appears that even though the NDC stayed away from the CRI-ARE forum, the party secured copies of the Civil Society Education Manifesto 2012 and took pains to incorporate key recommendations into its own plans.

NDC Manifesto 2012

Indeed, the party indicates, when addressing the education sector, in its Manifesto for the 2012 elections that “The major policy thrust would be the attainment of universal access to secondary education by 2016.”

The party said in pursuance of this goal and in catering for the increasing number of students at this level, the NDC Government will “Construct two hundred (200) new Community Day Senior High Schools across the country with emphasis on districts where there are no such schools.”

Apt or not?

On the evidence of the work done by CRI and ARE I think President Mahama has got it right with his prioritisation of the 200 new SHS. That is how I want to conclude.
This article also appeared in the Friday March 8, 2013 edition of the Public Agenda newspaper. It was for the "MY MANIFESTO" column which I author.