Mahama predicts fall in education due to excessive investment

April 13, 2019

1 minute read

Former President, John Mahama, has predicted a fall in quality education at both the junior and senior high school levels due to excessive investments in the Free Senior High School (SHS) programme.

He explained that education in the country is bound to suffer if the government continues to expend all its financial resource on the Free SHS policy at the expense of basic and tertiary education.

According to him, the government has neglected the public basic school system making it unattractive for many Ghanaians.

Speaking at a lecture series organised by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at the University of Cape Coast on ‘the State of Education in Ghana’, former President Mahama noted that the government must swallow its pride, stop gagging teachers and engage stakeholders to fine-tune its educational policies.

He is on a two-day visit to the Central Region where he is touching base with NDC executives across selected constituencies and will also be interacting with key constituents in fishing communities, market women associations and some opinion leaders.

The former President told a packed audience of lecturers and students at the FELT Auditorium 900 that “poorly planned policies by the Nana Akufo-Addo-led administration will destroy the gains my administration made, the said current events on the education front must be a concern for every citizen.

“If you are spending all your money on secondary education, and less on tertiary and basic education, then there is something wrong with your educational system, it is strange for the government to budget GH¢2 billion on the Free SHS policy in this academic year, while other sectors of education are completely neglected.

“If you have GH¢ 2 billion to spend on education, will you spend it on Free SHS?” the former president quizzed and urged the government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to be accommodating of suggestions from seasoned educationists and other stakeholders on education in order not to collapse the educational system.

“When they [NPP] started this Free SHS, anyone who gave a contrary suggestion was lambasted and called names not even people from their fold were spared, now, see the mess they are creating in the educational sector,” former President Mahama lamented.