Education and Management with Nii Armah ADDY: Politics over quality education…the death of development

The clamour for development by Ghanaians will continue to heighten as many are exposed to the development of other countries through the usage of the Internet. Such clamour for development is even precipitated by Ghanaians who have had the opportunity to travel to developed countries. As Ghana opens up more to visitors and investors from developed countries, the quest for development is further required. Development of any country will never manifest to the extent that the country’s educational system hinges on political deception rather than quality.

The continuous cry for quality development of Ghana’s educational sector can simply be measured by the quality of recent past students from primary to university as compared to the quality of 20 years ago. The declining and worsened quality of education as experienced in the country, now, can be attributed to political gains rather than a carefully and systematically drawn plan to continuous improvement as a quality management standard.

When political educational decisions give way to national educational decision, that is when we will begin to see the revival of our educational quality from which we can pursue continuous improvement. In the last 7 years, some of the managers of our national education did not serve the country’s educational sector as expected to bring quality needed for national development. Not only did they not have the verve for the position, but also their posturing is anti-educational leadership.

Unfortunately, those appointees were used to push the very policy that has almost rendered our public education system an insurmountable mess. Subsequent governments must choose their appointees carefully with national development agenda rather than political expediency. It is only a matter of time that national appointment based on politics will expose not only the appointee, but the whole country.

To justify the title for this article, I will enumerate on six (6) pointers in the foregoing paragraphs, where political decisions overtook quality educational decisions; hence, the dwindling effect of our human development, which automatically leads to the death of development.

1. Nurses training allowance

The nurses training allowance comprises beneficiaries as diploma rotation nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. The allowances of these various health sections are to support students’ financial needs to enable them stay in school for the duration of their training.

Circumstances demand innovative financial planning. The national health records at the time showed many places in the population, specifically sub-urban and rural areas, are without health posts and/or without instruments for administering health needs. While many health officers are being trained. It became necessary for re-engineering of the whole health system, including the nurses training allowance.

Subsequent governments took the decision to reinstate the nurses training allowance, which the government gained at the polls. That is not to last because like any policy whose spirit is solely political, it does not stand the test of time.

Today the quality at the nursing training has dwindled, with huge areas in allowance to be paid to students. In addition, the steady progress of community health post are not functional. What is more disturbing is that the allowance does not bind students to stay and serve the health needs of the country.

They are quick to travel abroad to seek greener pastures after their training to the detriment of the taxpayer and health needs of the country.

2. Teacher training allowance

Similar to the nurses training allowance, the teachers training allowance has suffered same political paralysis over quality education to the death of the development of the country. There are many instances where the teachers do not necessarily have interest in teaching in the future, but for the allowance, they enrol; and while at the teacher training school, they offer other degree programmes in different universities at distance and weekend sessions.

The management of the teacher training allowance has not gone well and it requires immediate revision if the country is to maximise its limited resources to enhance the educational sector. Like the nurses, the teachers are leaving the country in grooves. How will the country make its return-on-investment on those teachers?

3. Printing and distribution of past examination questions

Another huge waste of scarce national resources to place politics over quality education is the printing and distribution of past examination questions for distribution to students. This is what I asked in a previous paper: ‘‘is it education or examination?’’

But for an anticipated political gain, why should a whole government spend  millions of money to print past examination questions to distribute to students, knowing very well that proper education has not been pursued? They sought an easy way out that is detrimental to the development of the country. What kind of educational policy dictates this direction? More probing is required in this national  menace. It must not be allowed to continue.

4. Non-guarantor students’ loan

What is the progress of the non-guarantor students’ loan since its implementation? The most effective way to students financing is arguably through loans. The effective management of the loan scheme is when students are able to gain employment after their education and begin to pay those loans. That way, there is a revolving fund that runs the scheme effectively.

The situation on the ground is the non-availability of graduate unemployment statistics; hence, an experiential analysis from employment applications and the non-growing and non-expanding economy lends credence to the assumption that there is a huge number of loan defaulters, thereby rendering the non-guarantor students’ loan scheme morbid.

5. Mass Free Senior High School (Free SHS)

As for talking about the premature mass Free SHS enrolment will never go away anytime soon, unless the quality associated with secondary school education is manifestly seen and experienced. The mass Free SHS implementation is probably the biggest educational miscalculation for national development.

It is an activity solely aimed at political mathematics for gaining votes. To unsuspecting students and parents, the mass Free SHS is seen as a financial aid by government; therefore, the need to vote for the government to remain in power. However, where quality is diluted by quantity, one should not praise it but attribute it as a waste of scarce national resources.

Another miscalculation is where all the schools under the scheme are given equal resources without cognisance to the fact that some schools need more and, therefore, giving them same resources as those who already have more do not achieve the intended aim of the scheme, which is meant to be a pro-poor scheme.

The political protagonists stretched the argument to the contrary when the call for ‘review’ of the mass Free SHS was loud. Political attention was diverted to play to the masses that ‘review’ means ‘cancellation’; when, in fact, nobody by any strand of imagination has called for its cancellation. Politics over quality education: the death of development in Ghana.

6. No textbooks

It still baffles the mind that a country runs an educational system without textbooks, yet huge sums of money are spent on other non-important ventures. Reasons accounting to no textbooks in schools is yet to be explain to discerning minds.

Apportioning scarce national resources to maximise gains is a leadership call. The leader determines priority areas and allocates its scarce resources to it. The need not to have textbooks in schools under any attempt to explain it away is nothing short of leadership under-performance because it does not affect them directly.

Reasonable advocates must speak up for the masses. Pursuing politics that does not inure to the core of development for the people is servitude at their expense. A national development planning agenda that secludes Ghana’s educational sector from the party politics of the day is a clarion call.

 

Nii Armah Addy is a Lawyer, an Educationist and a Management Consultant. He is a Fellow at the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a policy think-tank based in Ghana.

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