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News
Release
NPP
September
11, 2012
Nana Addo Education
If good health is basic to our survival, good
education is critical to our development. Education
creates social mobility; Market women and fishermen,
farmers and traders, taxi drivers and artisans, hawkers
and kayayei, and, indeed, every mother and father, all
hope that education will help their children escape
poverty and give them access to a good life.
Education is at the heart of the NPP programme. We
cannot transform the economy and the country without
transforming the knowledge and skills of our people.
Every child, rich or poor, able-bodied or disabled,
deserves a good education.
Currently, at every stage of education, our children are
falling out of the system. To our eternal shame, some
children born in this country never even make it to a
classroom. Then, of the numbers that do start school,
over 60 per cent of them do not make it to secondary
school. The situation has become significantly worse
over the last three years, with even fewer children (47%
as against 62% in 2008) passing the BECE. In some
villages, not a single child passes the exam. Every
year, more than 150,000 young Ghanaians leave school at
JHS level without any opportunities for further
education or training. This is dangerous!
To change this situation, we will redefine basic
education and make it compulsory from Kindergarten to
Senior High School. To ensure that no child is denied
access to secondary education, we will remove the
biggest obstacles that currently stand in their way:
cost and access. In addition to tuition and other costs
already borne by government, admission, library,
computer, science centre and examination fees will all
be free. So will boarding, feeding and entertainment
fees, along with textbooks and utilities. In order to
ensure equity, day students will also be fed at school
free of charge. Free secondary school education will
cover Technical and Vocational institutions.
I know this will be expensive. But, as the Ewe saying
has it, “you cook important foods in important pots.”
The cost of providing free secondary school education
will be cheaper than the cost of the current alternative
of a largely uneducated and unskilled workforce that
retards our development. Leadership is about choices – I
will choose to invest in the future of our youth and of
our country.
Fellow citizens, I know numbers can be boring, but these
are important numbers. The additional cost of providing
Free Senior High School will be around 1% of Ghana’s
GDP. The cost of providing free secondary school
education, which includes tuition, boarding, feeding and
all the other charges for the 2013-2014 academic year,
is estimated at 0.1% of our GDP. This translates into
some GH˘78 million. We have made provision for a major
increase in enrollment as a result of admitting all JHS
students into SHS in 2014-2015. We expect the cost to
rise to GH˘288 million (0.3% of GDP) in that academic
year and increase to GH˘774 million in 2015-2016 (0.7%
of GDP). Additional expenditure on more teachers,
infrastructure for schools, including expanding and
rehabilitating existing infrastructure, and establishing
cluster schools in areas where there are no Senior High
Schools, will bring the total cost to GH˘755 million
(0.9% of GDP) in 2013 and rise to GH˘1.45 billion (1.3%
of GDP) in 2016. Providing free secondary education will
increase the total educational expenditure from the 4.1%
of GDP in 2012 to 5.8% by 2016, a figure which is still
below the UNESCO minimum of 6%. I am prepared to go
beyond that in order to improve quality at all levels –
Primary, JHS, SHS, and Tertiary.
Countries that have taken deliberate, successful steps
to improve their economies have spent substantial
amounts of their national income on education. For
example, in 1960, during its post-war transformation,
Japan spent 21.4% of its GDP on education and Malaysia,
at an equivalent period in 1990, spent 15.3% of its GDP.
On our continent, a number of African countries are
doing better than us. Kenya spends 6.7% of its GDP on
education, South Africa 6% and even tiny Lesotho puts us
to shame by spending 13% of its GDP on education. We may
be able to beat them at football, but not in education.
Let me put this into context; the NDC admits to paying
out some GH˘640 million, equivalent to 1.4% of Ghana's
2010 GDP, as judgement debts. Are we telling parents and
their children that a Ghana that can afford to spend
1.4% of its income on judgement debts cannot afford to
spend an additional 1.3% of its income on giving its
children free secondary education?
We know how to fund it. A percentage of the oil revenues
allocated to the Ghana National Petroleum Company, and
for the funding of the budget, as well as a greater
percentage from GETFund, will be used to finance the
programme.
These plans can only work with the enthusiastic support
of a well-trained and motivated teaching workforce. We
do not have enough teachers and many are not happy with
their lot. Last year, the Minister for Education said
there was a 60,000-teacher deficit in the country. The
NPP will attract, train and retain young professionals
into the teaching profession. We will make it easier for
teachers to upgrade their skills, improve their status
and provide them with incentives . For example, any
teacher with 10 or more years of service will be
eligible for a mortgage scheme, supported by government,
for a home anywhere in the country. We shall endeavour
to make teaching in the rural areas, in particular, less
stressful by providing accommodation and transportation.
It is obvious that the scope of our modern lives has
placed extra responsibilities on our teachers. With most
families now made up of both parents going out to work,
children spend much longer periods at school and
teachers have to see to their moral as well as academic
upbringing. Society must recognise this and accord our
teachers the necessary incentives. That is why an
Akufo-Addo presidency, God-willing, will introduce a
Teacher First policy to give teachers the recognition
they deserve. Free education must be achieved, hand in
hand, with quality education and we shall work with the
religious bodies to ensure equal weight is attached to
the moral upbringing of our children. We also
acknowledge the important work the private schools are
doing, and we will work with them to improve delivery.
Our young people need skills for the job market. We need
apprenticeship schemes that teach skills and guarantee
quality. We will borrow from the experiences of
countries that have industrialised with the skills of
artisans. On a recent trip to Germany, I explored the
possibilities of collaboration so that we can bring home
the apprenticeship models, which have helped Germany
make quality products that are famed around the world.
The 2008 Education Act made provisions for
apprenticeship schemes. We will implement them.
Technical and Vocational Institutions will be increased,
equipped and enhanced to help fill the critical skills
gap required to industrialise Ghana. At the higher
level, education must produce technical, professional
and managerial personnel to drive Ghana’s
industrialisation and transformation.
We shall formalise collaboration between government, the
private sector, teachers’ associations and institutions
of higher learning, including polytechnics, for manpower
planning and needs and, thereby, address this new,
unwelcome phenomenon of rising levels of graduate
unemployment. We will put greater emphasis on research
and development, science and technology, to provide the
nuts and bolts for the new economy.
--
NPP Communications Directorate
NPP Headquarters, Asylum Down. Accra.
Dep. Director: Curtis Perry K. Okudzeto
(024-9679008)
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