A Regional Communication Team member of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) John Paul Danka has said, “If you want to destroy any nation, you don’t need to throw bombs, you don’t need to cause war, target the education system and that ends it”.
Mr. Danka made the pronouncement when discussing the government flagship programme of Free Senior High School (FSHS) Policy on ApexnewsGh.Com flagship Programme dubbed ‘SPEAKOUT UPPER EAST REGION’ on Monday, September 26, 2022
Giving some history about how the NDC government started the process, Mr. Danka said, in the 1992 constitution Article 25 (1b) the provision was made for the country to look at all forms of Secondary school education, the best way it could be affordable, accessible.
He pointed out, that there was a need for then NDC government to start looking into the FSHS Policy in the constitution and later arrived at ‘Progressively Free Senior High School’
“1n 2015 thereabout my government and my president decided to look at the FSHS policy in the constitution. The Key word here was ‘Progressively Free Senior High School because we know our economy has issues and for that matter, if we really want to implement it holistically, we will have issues. So, we started with the assumption of most of the fees of these students which had to do with a little about 320,000 students. We absorb their fees for them and subsequently, we were looking for an additional 120, 000 Borden students we can absorb to see how progressively do what we can do that will not be a stress on the budget. So, that was the beginning of the Progressive Free Senior School”. Mr. Danka explained
However, Mr. Danka noted that when it comes to policy, the NPP and NDC are like two doctors trying to cure a particular sickness, “NPP might decide use ‘quinine’ to treat malaria and we the NDC might decide to use ‘malafan’ and at the end of the day we looked at it from that angle of progressiveness and they came in and say, it is long overdue they want to implement it fully. So, that is how come we now have the full wholesale as FSHS. But if you looked at it progressively, almost every government did something as part of the introduction”. He stress
According to the NDC Communicator, “Nobody is saying FSHS is not good, but the problem we are having here is that we cannot have those at the base level doing the implementation. They are always afraid of telling the policymakers that they have a problem or challenges with A, B or C and that is why we started talking about the review of FSHS as our position. There are others who even at some bigger platforms say John Mahama is going to cancel FSHS but we keep telling them they are wrong. Today are we not back into reviewing? What am doing with my brother, is it not reviewing? He quizzed
“So, if is a national policy all that we are saying is that, accept that there is a challenge and then we can move on”
Meanwhile, was also worried that if our schools begin to produce bad students, and they become nurses when we go to the hospital our lives will be in danger.
“Today, you let any engineering student from the polytechnic or the University say that I have built a car my lecturer or my professor should come and test the car, none of them will come because they fear for their lives. He stated
Source: Apexnewsgh.com
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