The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, has proposed a national stakeholder dialogue to review the implementation progress of the Free Senior High School policy.
Teacher Unions have consistently called on the government to engage them in the implementation of the policy following complaints by some school heads, parents, and other stakeholders on various aspects of the policy.
Speaking on Citi FM and Citi TV’s The Big Issue on Saturday, Kofi Asare urged the government to adopt an accommodating approach to the views of other stakeholders concerning the Free Senior High School program rather than adopting a defensive posture.
“When you raise issues of congestion which is a function of the delayed completion of projects, then the response is PR. We deploy people to handle PR then we set our own questions and answer them which does not in any way address the issue of delayed construction of projects or the unavailability of beds in our schools.”
He said it was time for the government to bring all stakeholders together to find ways to improve the free SHS policy.
“I think the issues being raised are issues that can be addressed, but the approach should not be an overly defensive posture that always seeks to demonize the person raising the issues. So these are issues that require us to sit around a table with all stakeholders and have an extensive discussion for about a week, and then clear our minds of the indicators that we are measuring the Free Senior High School’s success against, what the deficits are, and what everyone has to do to ensure that we all cumulatively act in support of quality improvement in the program. We can’t hide from this because it will and must happen so the earlier we do it, the better,” he noted.
