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Introduction
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) introduced its flagship Free Upper Secondary Education (FSHS) policy in September 2017 as the Presidential Initiative was the party’s fundamental promise to Ghana’s electorate ahead of the elections. 2016 generals.
Since its launch, due to the large number of beneficiaries, the Free SHS initiative has gained traction and generated citizen participation and interest in the promises made by political parties on how they intend to improve the education sector and also expand the reach. of the initiative.
In its latest 2020 manifesto, while promoting its Free SHS initiative, the ruling party has made new promises, which it hopes to draw more voters to its side in the December 2020 general election. The ruling party boldly declared its achievements since taking office command of the government in 2017.
The NPP statements on education have been broken down from numbers 92 to 130, which can be found on pages 52 to 58. Generally, the party deserves praise for the statements if all or most of them were accurate.
However, close checks and analysis indicate that most, if not all, of the claims made in the manifesto are either unfounded, misleading, or the usual grandiose promises of vote courtship.
In the following paragraphs, the Ghana Economic Dialogue (GED) team exposes some serious inconsistencies and fundamental flaws in many of the claims made in the manifesto, to help citizens decipher the contents of the usual political hot balloons.
Claim number one
The NPP, on page 54 of its 2020 manifesto, at item 98, states that it has restored book and research allowances for teachers and increased them by 200 percent.
Comments
This claim about increasing the allocation for books and research by 200 percent is false and misleading, as there was nothing to restore in the first place, as the previous government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) never withdrew or canceled the allowances for books and research. . Careful verifications also revealed that the previous regime proposed a replacement for the subsidy for books and research and thus initiated plans to establish a National Research Fund (NRF), to ensure better funding of scientific research in the country. Therefore, the proposed fund was intended to increase the amount of money paid to professors for research. To advance the steps and help implement the NRF, a National Research Fund bill was developed in 2014.
The Ghana Economic Dialogue can state without a hint of equivocation that the Ghana University Teachers Association (UTAG) and the then Ghana Polytechnic Teachers Association (POTAG) protested the establishment of the NRF with the reason that the two institutions did not they had been consulted. The two higher institutions of teachers also argued that the NRF and the BRA could coexist.
After arduous negotiations, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed between the government and UTAG in 2015. The MOU documented that the BRA would continue to be paid until negotiations on the way forward were concluded. Therefore, the previous government adhered to the MOU and continued to pay the BRA until he left office in January 2017.
Again, there are two components of the BRA; the book allowance, which amounts to $ 1,500 and the research allowance, which was GHS500. What the current government has increased is the research allocation component, which is now 1,500 GHS. Therefore, it cannot be true that the current government has increased the two research grants by 200 percent.
Claim number two
In item 103 on page 54 of the 2020 manifesto, the PNP states that it has implemented a Free SHS policy (universal), which covers Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).
Comments
The addition of the qualifying phrase “universal basis” to the claim to implement a free SHS policy itself suggests and is an admission that at least one form of free SHS policy existed before the NPP took office. in January 2017. What was therefore introduced by the NPP was a modification and improvement of what the NDC government started before leaving office. This fact has been recognized by the current NPP government, with the claim that the NDC left some debts that it incurred in the provision of Free SHS for them to come to pay.
Second, it is not entirely true, and therefore misleading, that the PNP claims that the free SHS policy also includes free TVET. The TVET sector of Ghana’s education system encompasses various ministries and agencies; including, among others, the Ministry of Education (MoE), the Ministry of Employment and Labor Relations (MELR), the Technical Education Division (TED) of the MoE NVTI, ICCES and with the coordination carried out by COTVET.
What the NPP government refers to as free TVET, the Ghana Economic Dialogue respectfully presents, it covers only those in the Higher Technical Schools (SHTS) or the Technical Institutes. This, therefore, makes TVET students from the Ministry of Education the only current beneficiaries of the SHS Free policy in the TVET sector. NVTI and ICCES students, among others, who actually make up the majority of the country’s TVET population, do not currently benefit from the SHS Free policy. It should also be emphasized that these aforementioned institutions are all part of the upper secondary education sector in Ghana.
Claim number three
Furthermore, in the TVET sector, the NPP claims, at point 112 on page 56, to have developed a TVET Qualifications Framework and to have accredited some 80 institutions to implement competence-based training (CBT) programs in the country.
Comments
This statement is also false, as the development of the TVET Qualifications Framework and the introduction of CBT in the TVET sector of Ghana’s education system long before the current government took office. The eight-level TVET National Qualifications Framework was developed and adopted through the promulgation of a Legislative Instrument (LI 2195) in 2012, under the previous NDC regime.
Second, the accreditation of institutions to run the CBT and subsequent teacher training at those institutions started in 2013/2014. Technical Universities (later Polytechnics) were also incorporated to run the CBT program, with the selection of the Faculty of Technology of the University of Education (UEW-COLTEK), Kumasi Campus, as the center to oversee the implementation of the program. Subsequently, a CBT Center was established on the COLTEK campus to place it in a better position to take on that responsibility.
Claim number four
At point 130 on page 58 of the PNP 2020 Manifesto, the party claimed to have instituted a $ 219 million project to improve learning outcomes in the worst performing schools under the Project Accountability for Student Results. Ghana Learning (GALOP).
Comments
This claim is again false and misleading, as the evidence shows that the GALOP Project was not initiated by the current government. GALOP is purely a World Bank (WB) sponsored project with EPULIC listed as the Borrower and IIST as the implementing agency. This WB initiative began in 2019 with the objective of supporting the implementation of the Education Sector Plan (2010 to 2020), which has now been expanded and replaced by the Education Strategic Plan (2018 to 2030).
conclusion
The above examples are just a few of the false and misleading claims discovered in the 2020 PNP manifesto. There are several other inaccurate claims about the education sector in the PNP manifesto. These can be found in items 93, 94, 95 and 96 on page 52; items 101 and 106 on page 54; item 111 on page 55. Therefore, it is worthy to conclude that apart from its flagship Free SHS program, all other claims about education are a pale shadow.
About the authors:
the Ghana Economic Dialogue (GED) is a team of economists and technical experts, who have combined their experience to help shape the discourse of national development. You can contact the GED team at: [email protected]
