Consider private schools in the free SHS policy

Opinions on Sunday, November 29, 2020

Columnist: Osei Tutu

2020-11-29

When the free SHS policy took off in 2017, private SHS administrators made a series of proposals to the government for consideration.

One of them was that the government should send students to private schools, pay the same amount that the government is spending on each student in the pension, and private schools would take care of their tuition without charging the students any additional fees.

For me, the proposal was very commendable. It would have cost the government less and the two-way system would not have been necessary. This is because private schools have the capacity to absorb the excess of students that created the need for the two-way system.

Interestingly, the government did not adopt the proposal and this has put private schools in UCI ever since. Some have really collapsed.

The government’s explanation for not adopting the proposal was that it could not attest to the caliber of the teachers who would handle the students.

As genuine as this explanation may seem, it is quite implausible. If the government couldn’t vouch for the caliber of teachers in private schools, why allow them to operate in the first place?

The truth is that the majority of private SHS teachers are first-grade graduates. They may not be professional teachers, but they have the knowledge and skills necessary to handle students at that level.

It is also true that the government is putting in some infrastructure in an attempt to end the two-way system. But this happens rather at a slow pace.

According to the Vice Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, the then NDC government was able to complete 29 of the E-bock schools and the NPP has added another 28 to make 57. But this is not enough to end the double track.

Our safest bet is to assess the capacity of private schools and include some of them in the free SHS policy.

Now that the NDC party promises to include private schools in the SHS policy for free if it wins power in the next election, perhaps the PNP government will give the idea favorable consideration.