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Press Release
NPP, November
26, 2012
EDUCATION: THE KEY TO TRANSFORMING GHANA
A SPEECH
DELIVERED BY THE NPP 2012 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, NANA
AKUFO-ADDO, ON NOVEMBER 26, 2012 AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAPE
COAST, CAPE COAST, CENTRAL REGION
I am very pleased to be here in Cape Coast, the first Capital
of our country, and I am grateful to the authorities of this
University for the opportunity to deliver this speech here.
As we get into the last few days of the campaign, it is time,
I believe, that I address once again the issue that has become
the central theme of Election 2012. In the course of this
campaign, I have made speeches around Ghana spelling out what
the NPP plans to do in agriculture, housing,
industrialization, culture, health and security, if, by the
Grace of God, on December 7, we are elected into power.
Today, I return to the subject of Education, because even
though it is a subject that is unavoidable whatever else one
is talking about, be it health, agriculture,
industrialization, housing or security, we must address the
subject by itself. I am happy that education has driven the
discourse in this year’s presidential election campaign, but I
am afraid we are in danger of the critical issues being lost
in the deliberate hysteria that has been generated by our
opponents.
I am glad to be making this speech in this ancient city of
Cape Coast, for it is the most appropriate place to talk about
education in Ghana. This is the home of Ghana’s first primary
school, the Philip Quaque School and it is also the home of
our first boys’ secondary school, Mfantsipim School and of our
first girls’ secondary school, Wesley Girls’ High School. Cape
Coast has rightly earned the name of the ‘Athens’ of Ghana, if
not of West Africa.
Let us start, first of all, with the one thing we are all
agreed on. The economy of Ghana has to be transformed to make
it a high-income economy. We must move from being a natural
resource producer to a value-added economy. We must process
the natural resources we have to enable us reap higher
benefits from them. To achieve what we are all agreed on, we
must have an educated workforce.
In 55 years of independence, the progress we have made in all
aspects of our lives has been painfully slow. It is time to
make the bold moves that will enable us make rapid progress to
transform our economy and the lives of Ghanaians. A society
that aims to transform itself into a modern productive player
in the global market, with an educated workforce, must get its
educational policies right.
Luckily for all of us, this is a well-trodden path and there
are many examples to learn from. The societies that have made
rapid progress around the world have all put education at the
heart of their development. The United States of America did
it a hundred years ago, the British did it seventy years ago
and the nations that we started life with fifty something
years ago, like Singapore and Malaysia, have done it.
Let’s take the Singapore example. At independence from Britain
in 1959 and then separation from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore
had no assets other than its deepwater port. Its population
was illiterate and unskilled. It had few natural resources,
substandard housing and recurring conflict among the ethnic
and religious groups that made up its population. Singapore,
at the time, imported most of its food, water and energy.
Singapore’s leaders decided to make education the focus of all
developmental efforts. They saw education as central to
building the economy and the nation.
Once the decision was taken, they rapidly built schools and
recruited teachers on a large scale. Within six years, they
had attained universal primary education and by the early
1970s they attained universal lower secondary education and
they have never looked back since then. Today, Singapore is
widely acknowledged as having one of the world’s leading
economies and most advanced and successful education systems.
In a country with no natural resources, this is a remarkable
feat and reiterates what one of its Prime Ministers famously
said “The wealth of a nation lies in its people.”
Unlike Singapore, mercifully, Ghana is blessed with natural
resources and it should be easier to educate our population,
if only we have the courage to make the right decisions. We,
in the NPP, believe leadership is about making choices. And we
have decided that it is time to use the proceeds from our
natural resources to educate the people who will drive our
economic transformation. Instead of the revenues from our
mineral and oil resources getting into the hands of a few
people, who are currently in charge of our state institutions,
we think the most equitable and progressive way of using these
revenues is to educate and empower our population.
There is no part of Ghana that does not recognize the
importance of education. We have all accepted that education
is the best route to moving out of poverty. I have met parents
who sell their inheritance to make sure their children get an
education, I have met children whose desperation to get into a
higher level of education is palpable. I am aware of the
sacrifices many of your parents have made to bring you thus
far.
I have told the story of the 17-year old boy I met in Akwasiho,
in Abetifi in the Eastern Region, who said he dropped out of
school because his parents couldn’t pay his fees in Senior
High School. As I said, this particular boy’s story stays with
me mostly because of the sound of desperation in his voice as
he feared life was already passing him by.
You will all recall that, under the Kufuor administration, a
lot of effort went into what eventually emerged as the
Education Reforms of 2007. One of the most significant
innovations that occurred under these reforms was the
redefinition of Basic Education to include two years of
kindergarten education. By this move, children from
disadvantaged homes got the opportunity to get the start in
education that their colleagues take for granted. It brought a
measure of equity at the start of the education ladder.
I have said it on occasion and it needs repeating here. To our
dying shame, some Ghanaian children still never make it into a
classroom. That is something that cannot and should not
continue and an Akufo-Addo administration, God willing, will
make a special push to get all children into school at the
right age.
For us to make a success of our education policy, we must pay
attention to teachers. Our Teacher First Policy is at the
heart of the NPP’s education policy. It is only a crop of
well-trained, self-confident and contented teachers that can
deliver the educated and skilled workforce we require to
transform our economy. Under the Teacher First policy, we
shall restore the teaching profession to the status it once
enjoyed and make it an attractive career choice.
Under the Kufuor government, teachers made remarkable strides.
By 2008, the salaries of teachers had increased tenfold from
what they were paid in 2000. We intend to broaden the
incentives.
Accordingly, we will facilitate teacher training nationwide,
as well as special incentives especially for those who teach
in rural areas. We will introduce special bursaries for
excellent teachers with initial or continuous professional
education in Maths, Science, Languages, IT, Design, Technical
and Vocational Education. Another major incentive will be
government support for teachers to acquire homes. We will
support teachers to enroll in Distance Education programmes to
boost their capacity. We will also ensure that every new
school built in the rural areas will have teachers’
accommodation attached to it.
Further, in the NPP era, all the 38 teacher training colleges
were renamed Colleges of Education and upgraded to tertiary
status. Increased funding was made available for the upgrading
of infrastructure and some were earmarked to train teachers in
specific subjects. Fifteen of the Colleges of Education were
dedicated to the training of Mathematics and Science teachers,
ten to the training of French teachers, with another seven
specializing in Early Childhood Education teacher training.
All the Colleges of Education are currently operating at
half-strength that is 50% intake, due to budgetary
constraints. We are committed to providing the necessary funds
to enable them operate at full-strength, and train the
teachers we need, and thereby reduce significantly the teacher
deficit we now have.
I was extremely surprised to read earlier this year that the
Minister of Education had said at a press conference and I
quote “One key initiative of government is the Untrained
Teachers’ Diploma in Basic Education (UTBDE) programme
targeted at untrained teachers to enhance their capacity.” Mr.
Minister, this initiative was started under the Kufuor
administration, back in 2004, to provide all untrained
teachers with a qualification. We are glad the policy has
continued under this administration.
If it were not so tragic, we would all have had some merriment
watching the antics of this NDC government as they have sought
to toy with the education of our children. We have heard this
government boast about how many schools under trees they have
abolished; only to discover, when pressed to name them, that
many of these were schools manufactured in the imagination of
their spokespersons.
We have been told about thousands of laptops being distributed
all over Ghana; it turns out boys names are to be found in
girls’ school lists, whilst one institution has come out to
say that none of the names against their school’s list belongs
to any enrolled student. On the University campuses at least,
it would appear the distribution of the laptops has its proper
name: One Laptop per NDC Supporter.
This NDC government appears to think that the education of
Ghana’s children is a political toy for them to play with.
They reduced the duration of Senior High School (SHS) from 4
years to 3 years for no reason but, that it had been done by
an NPP government. The results of the past two years have
shown students who spent 4 years at SHS performing excellently
at the West African Senior School Certificate of Education (WASSCE).
The phenomenon of Second and Third World War, which was the
name given to students sitting the exam over and over again,
disappeared.
We are told that this academic year, for example, at the
University of Ghana Medical School, to qualify to be simply
invited to an admissions interview, an applicant had to have a
minimum of 8 straight As. In the end, only 100 of the 180
applicants interviewed were offered places. Across other
tertiary institutions, it is evident that the quality of
grades of applicants has risen in the past two years. The
children who are in the first group of the three-year cohort
are having to endure extraordinary extra lesson periods. Do we
really need to subject our children to such trauma simply to
score political points?
We will review the 4-yr / 3yr controversy simply based on the
hard data that emerges from examination results in our goal to
pursue the path of greatest benefit to Ghana’s children and
settle the matter once and for all.
The next NPP government will build upon the successes of the
Kufuor administration in education and whatever that is good
under the NDC. In the 1999/2000 academic year, there were a
little over 2.1 million children enrolled in Ghana’s public
primary schools. In the 2008/9 academic year this had risen by
more than 40% to a little over 3 million children.
The introduction of the Capitation Grant is credited with this
increase in enrolment. The Capitation Grant was introduced to
make basic education totally fee-free, by removing the main
obstacle to the success of the FCUBE (FREE COMPULSORY
UNIVERSAL BASIC EDUCATION policy). Fees for sports, culture
and the like were absorbed. And under the Kufuor government,
this policy was enforced by the Ministry of Education. Any
head of a public basic school who introduced fees, under any
guise, was suspended. Today, under the watch of this NDC
government, I hear many schools have re-introduced fees with
impunity.
Another outstanding policy of the Kufuor government was the
introduction of the 1:1 Textbook Policy at the basic level in
2006. For the first time, textbooks were provided free of
charge to all Ghana’s children from Primary 1 to JSS 3. Each
pupil had a book in every single subject. Textbooks were no
longer the preserve of cupboard monitors in our schools and
even a 25% buffer stock of books was printed. Under the NDC,
this ratio has been miserably skewed. The NDC’s major textbook
intervention has been the procurement of atlases and
dictionaries, under the auspices of the Deputy Education
Minister, in dubious circumstances at outrageous prices.
When it comes to tertiary education, the NDC claims go into
overdrive. To hear them you would think they invented the
concept of tertiary education in Ghana. I had thought, for
example, that the President made a genuine mistake in adding
the University of Mines and Technology, Tarkwa to his list of
inventions, but he persists in reciting it at every turn. Then
to my great surprise, I discover from this government’s
Education Sector Plan 2010-2020 that they intend to slash
funding to tertiary education, by nearly a third, within this
Plan’s period.
By now, everybody has heard their claims to have established
several universities and polytechnics. There is much more to
establishing a tertiary institution than giving it a name. For
example, the Polytechnics Act was passed in 1999, but, in
Bolgatanga and Wa, students were only admitted in 2003. Before
the NPP came into office, Bolgatanga and Wa did not even exist
as ‘Polytechnics Under Trees’.
The truth is available for public scrutiny on the Bolgatanga
Polytechnic’s website and I wish to quote from the history and
facts section: “An Acting Principal, Mr. R. A. Ajene, was
appointed from 1st February 1999 to establish Bolgatanga
Polytechnic. At that time, no single structure existed for the
institution except a bungalow allocated to him. A task force
that was set up to assist locate a suitable site for the
Polytechnic encountered initial difficulties, but finally
settled on the former Meat Marketing Board offices in July
2001.” The situation was exactly the same in Wa. The Kufuor
government built the campuses of both Wa and Bolgatanga
polytechnics from scratch and the NPP is very proud of these
achievements.
The situation at The University of Development Studies (UDS)
was only slightly better than these polytechnics. The NPP
Administration undertook a rapid development programme with
special allocations from the GETFund and the Teaching and
Learning Innovation Fund (TALIF) from the International
Development Association. The fact that the UDS was the only
tertiary institution to have a line item on the TALIF budget
showed the urgency with which the NPP treated the task of
bringing the UDS to a respectable standard.
There was a dramatic expansion of facilities between 2001 and
2008, in the tertiary sector. The GETFund helped, of course,
but it took focused and strong political will to achieve what
we did. Ghanaians can see today the GETFund being used to
finance things it was never meant to do. It is worth recalling
here the special donation of 20 billion old cedis from HIPIC
funds to the three older universities announced on this campus
in 2003 by President Kufuor. Lecture halls, student
residential halls and staff accommodation were constructed
under this initiative. The UCC campus was transformed.
Unfortunately, important initiatives like the construction of
The Business School Complex, Faculty of Science Annex and a
new Administration Block began by the Kufuor government have
been left unattended to by this NDC government. We will
complete them when, by the Grace of God, we come back.
The Students’ Loan Trust, new lecture theaters, modern halls
of residence, substantial increase in lecturers’ salaries and
better conditions of service, and scholarships for further
training of lecturers returned to our universities. And the
increase in enrolment was evidence of the investments that had
been made. From 40,670 enrolled students in public
universities in the 2000/1 academic year, there were 102,543
students in the 2008/9 academic year. Enrolment in
polytechnics more than doubled in the same period rising from
18,470 in 2000/2001 to 38,656 in the 2008/9 academic years. It
is cheering to note that the phrase “ageing professoriat” that
was such a regular feature of the university discussions has
disappeared in many faculties.
Under the last NPP government, there was expansion of
infrastructure in educational facilities on an impressive
scale in the secondary level. 31 secondary schools were
modernized to serve as model schools in their districts and
807 flats were provided as teacher accommodation. A total of
490 new classroom blocks were built in these model schools.
Another 470 more classrooms were built in other schools that
were not part of the model school scheme to expand access in
these schools.
In terms of transport facilities, 204 buses were given to
Senior High Schools; Nissan patrols were provided for
principals of all 38 teacher training colleges; Buses and
pick-ups were provided to Special Education institutions,
Vehicles for 10 Regional Directors and 138 District Directors.
In addition, each of the 138 districts received 60 bicycles
for onward distribution to teachers.
The substantial expansion in both educational infrastructure
and in enrolment at all levels of the educational system
clearly represents the solid foundation which was laid by the
Kufuor administration. And an Akufo-Addo government, God
willing, will build on this if, by the Grace of God and your
votes, on December 7 2012, the NPP is voted into power.
Too many children leave school unable to read, write or count.
The next NPP government will focus on the 3Rs - Reading,
Writing and Arithmetic. Together with our teachers, this
policy will be implemented through monitored programs and
regular assessments. We will work towards providing every
basic school with ICT infrastructure to keep them in touch
with global trends and also equip them early with the skills
that will be necessary in Ghana’s economic transformation. The
Inspectorate Board has an important role to play in ensuring
that there is proper supervision in our schools. The Board
will be equipped and given the support to do its work.
I have said that we intend to educate our population to drive
our industrialization process. This means there will be
emphasis on Science and Technology and Technical and
Vocational training. Why are we willing to entrust the most
expensive investments into the hands of poorly trained
artisans? Mechanics who handle our expensive cars, carpenters,
masons, plumbers who build our houses must be properly trained
and educated in the technological advances that move
economies. It is the technicians that will mostly determine
the quality of our workforce and we shall put technical
education in its proper exalted place.
The next NPP government will facilitate and support the rapid
development of skills for students of Technical and Vocational
schools. At the tertiary level, we will encourage career
counseling and involve the private sector in designing courses
that provide graduates with the hands-on skills they need in
the world of work.
We will also support non-traditional students by instituting
weekend schools, community workshops and special classes.
Plans to establish an Open University were far advanced in
2008. We will resurrect those plans and establish an Open
University to provide an opportunity for lifelong learning.
I must now turn my attention to the one aspect of our
education policy that has attracted the most attention; the
proposal for all Ghana’s children to attend Senior High School
for free. In other words, the government of Ghana will fund
the cost of Senior High School for all. Basic education, under
our plans, will be defined to start from two years of
kindergarten through to the end of Senior High School or
Technical and Vocational School.
By free SHS, we mean that in addition to tuition which is
already free, there will be no admission fees, free textbooks,
no library fees, no science centre fees, no computer lab fees,
no examination fees, no utility fees, free boarding and free
meals and day students will get a meal for free.
I want to spell out clearly what we intend to do so that no
one in Ghana will harbor any doubts before casting their vote
on December 7.
Free SHS already exists in parts of Ghana. In 1951, the
Northern Scholarships were established to bridge the gap
between the human capacity gap of the south and north of
Ghana. Today, the Northern Scholarship is known as the
Northern Extraction Scholarships. In addition to it being
tenable in the 3 regions of Northern Ghana, it has been
extended to four districts in the Brong Ahafo Region and six
districts in the Volta Region. Moreover, any Ghanaian, with
one parent of Northern descent who lives and attends school
outside this demarcated territory qualifies for this
scholarship. It is not means-tested in any way, shape or form.
Some sixty years on, two products of this free secondary
education policy have risen to the high office of President of
the Republic – The late Dr. Hilla Limann, President of the 3rd
Republic, and H.E. President John Mahama, our current
President.. The late Alhaji Aliu Mahama, who served as Vice
President to President J. A. Kufuor, is another example of a
beneficiary of this policy as is my running mate, the
distinguished economist and former Deputy Governor of the Bank
of Ghana, Dr Mahamadu Bawumia.
Can there be more compelling evidence of the value of free
senior secondary school education? On December 7, when the
ballot paper is handed to you, three of the eight contestants
of the presidential election would have made it that far on
the back of Northern Scholarships.
Given, the undoubted value which free secondary education has
brought to the North, the question is whether it is right and
equitable to continue to restrict it to the North or whether
the time has come to spread the value to every part of the
country so that the children of our farmers, our fishermen,
our taxi drivers, our market women, traders and hawkers in all
the ten regions of Ghana can also enjoy the same opportunity
that has produced Vice Presidents and Presidents.
Strangely enough, the NDC, led by a President who is a
beneficiary of free secondary education, says that the entire
infrastructure must be in place and the teachers needed must
be trained first before Free SHS is rolled out. If Kwame
Nkrumah had waited, I shudder to think of the consequences. At
the time that policy was rolled out, there was only one middle
school which was turned into a secondary school to serve the
three Northern regions; and the Tamale Teacher Training
College was the only college churning out teachers for the
three regions. Yet the lack of physical structures or teachers
did not make the scheme unrealizable.
The NDC government has established a University in the Volta
Region. It has only one purpose-built classroom block. They
have appropriated a Nurses Quarters’ in Ho, built by the
Kufuor government, for the university. Why didn’t they put the
required infrastructure in place and recruit all academics
before they established the University?
It seems to me that the NDC’s only major policy for the 2012
election is “The NPP cannot deliver free SHS!” Since we
outdoored this policy, its functionaries have voiced varied,
negative opinions on it. They started by saying ‘it was
impossible’, then they said “Ghana is not ready”, next they
said ‘we should wait 20 years’ and at the IEA debate in
Tamale, their Presidential Candidate admitted it was possible.
Two weeks to Election Day, they are back to saying it is
impossible and that it is only being used as a gimmick by the
NPP in a desperate bid to win political power.
In typical NDC fashion, their stance has not prevented their
activists from going around the rural areas with pictures of
the NDC presidential candidate as the person bringing free SHS.
Firstly, the NDC says Ghana cannot afford to roll out this
policy because it will be too expensive. It is ironic that
Ghana through the help of this NDC government could afford to
pay nearly 1 billion Ghana cedis in dubious judgement debts to
their cronies. This whopping sum of money plus a little oil
revenue could easily make the free SHS policy a reality.
Secondly, they say we are lying about the cost of Free SHS as
the figures we have quoted seem to be on the low side. That
does not surprise me. After all, the cost of building a
6-classroom block has ballooned from GHC 85,000 in 2008 to GHC
350,000 under the NDC.
It is not surprising, therefore, that our figures would seem
unrealistic since they only seem to deal in inflated figures.
I want to state clearly again that we have a well-thought out
plan that involves the building of 350 new Senior High Schools
and cluster Senior High Schools to accommodate all the
children who finish JHS 18 months after the coming into office
of an Akufo-Addo administration. In June 2013, according to
the latest Ghana Education Service census, 407,158 students
from both 3-yr SHS and 4yr-SHS cohorts will be graduating.
This means when Free SHS starts in September 2013 these places
will be available. The situation is, therefore, not nearly as
dire as the NDC wants everyone to believe.
If the need arises, we will also spend some GH¢25m a year to
buy extra school buses for the main purpose of transporting
day students to and from schools to make up for the short term
problem of insufficient facilities.
Fellow citizens, I know numbers can be boring, but permit me
to talk about some figures because these are important
numbers. The additional cost of providing Free Senior High
School will be around 1% of Ghana’s GDP. The cost of providing
free secondary school education, which includes tuition,
boarding, feeding and all the other charges for 2013, is
estimated at 0.1% of our GDP. This translates into some GH¢78
million. We have made provision for a major increase in
enrollment as a result of admitting all JHS students into SHS
in 2014-2015. We expect the cost to rise to GH¢288 million
(0.3% of GDP) in 2014 and increase to GH¢774 million in 2016
(0.7% of GDP).
Additional expenditure on more teachers, infrastructure for
schools, including expanding and rehabilitating existing
infrastructure, and establishing cluster schools in areas
where there are no Senior High Schools, will bring the total
cost to GH¢755 million (0.9% of GDP) in 2013 and rise to GH¢1.45
billion (1.3% of GDP) in 2016. Providing free secondary
education will increase the total educational expenditure from
the 4.1% of GDP in 2012 to 5.8% by 2016, a figure which is
still below the UNESCO minimum of 6%. I am prepared to go
beyond that in order to improve quality at all levels –
Primary, JHS, SHS, and Tertiary.
Ladies and Gentlemen, at this point, perhaps, some history
lessons may be helpful to all of us. When the British decided
on free secondary education by passing the famous Education
Act of 1944, it was at the peak of the Second World War. It
was a period during which Britain was going through the worst
economic and social hardship in its history. Much of Britain’s
infrastructure, including school and hospital facilities, had
been destroyed through massive bombs. Able-bodied men and
women from all professions had been conscripted into the war
and therefore there was a massive shortage of teachers. It was
in the midst of this storm that Britain decided to introduce
free secondary education.
I have read the full proceedings of the Parliamentary debate
which led to the adoption of the Education Bill of 1944. The
tale is all too familiar. Members of Parliament recognized the
acute shortage of teachers. They recognized the shortage of
school buildings and urged local authorities to begin
acquiring sites for school buildings. They considered the
cheapest ways of constructing school buildings, including
prefabricated structures. In their experience, however, no one
saw any of the problems as an impediment to the implementation
of the scheme. The over-riding concern was that every child
had to be educated up to secondary school level, so that
Britain could have the largest pool of educated citizens to
rebuild their nation.
There is another country that we can probably identify with
more easily. I refer to Trinidad and Tobago. They also have
taken the free SHS path, and it has paid off huge dividends.
Their literacy rate now exceeds 98% and productivity has shot
up by 65%. We certainly need a massive rise in productivity
here to make the breakthrough in our economy. Trinidadian
children attend both primary and secondary school for free
and, in addition, their Ministry of Education provides free
transport, books and meals. It has been done! It has paid off!
Ghana is going to do it!
The truth of the matter is that the provision of educational
infrastructure, like the provision of roads and hospitals, is
an on-going process. No country has enough of it. To this day,
every country in the world sees the need to build new schools
or to update and improve old ones. More and more teachers are
needed every time. And they need to be constantly trained and
re-trained. The scientific and technological advancement of
the world make this an obvious imperative.
The fact that we have been unable to give all our citizens the
education which has enabled the countries of the West and Asia
to thrive, is the missing link in our economic development.
Countless examples exist beyond Singapore or Britain to
buttress this point. I wish to cite Botswana, a country that
attained independence years after Ghana, as another example.
Shortly after independence, Botswana had the vision and the
courage, to commit itself to a program of free education up to
secondary level. Today, this Southern African state has earned
the extraordinary reputation of being Africa’s best performing
economy. Botswana does not have the range of natural resources
we have in this country but they have been able to harness
what modest resources they have and managed them well. Truly,
the wealth of a nation lies in its people, as was forcefully
restated by the respected former President of Botswana, H.E.
Festus Mogae, at a recent lecture he gave in Accra. He said
Botswana’s success is directly tied to its education policy.
Ghana needs the well-trained, well-qualified and skilled human
resources to set us on the path of economic transformation.
For this reason, I am committed, without any equivocation,
without any reservation, without any doubt, to take Ghana to
the stage where Senior High School education will be free to
every Ghanaian child.
The NDC says you should wait for 20 years before you can enjoy
what their Presidential Candidate enjoyed more than 30 years
ago. The opportunity, which President Mahama enjoyed as a
young man, that led him to become President of the Republic,
is what I want every single Ghanaian child to have. Tell the
naysayers, we are already 20 years behind time.
We will give Ghana’s children free senior high school
education NOW, not in some distant, indeterminate future, but
NOW. We will do that while continuing to provide well-planned
infrastructural development for the schools, increasing
opportunities for teachers and uplifting their status in
society. We will do this whilst working hard everyday to
increase the numeracy, literacy, writing and ICT skills of our
children. We will do this while focusing on increasing access
and quality hand-in-hand.
I want every Ghanaian child to attend secondary school not
just for what they learn in books, but for the life
experiences that they will gain. I want each of them to look
in the mirror in the morning, every morning and know that they
can have the confidence to achieve anything they dream of when
they complete their studies. I want them to have the personal
dignity of knowing that they worked hard and that they are as
capable as anyone else in the world. And I want parents to
look upon their children with pride as they watch them mature
into self-confident adults.
Contrary to the cynical view taken by the NDC presidential
candidate, that this policy is about winning an election,
infact, it is about preparing the next generation for the
economic transformation of Ghana.
If you believe no Ghanaian child should be left behind simply
for financial reasons, vote for the NPP! If you believe that
out of the children who have dropped out of education, a child
may have emerged who, could have risen to the Presidency of
Ghana, vote for the NPP!
Free SHS is possible! Free SHS is feasible! Free SHS is for
now! If on December 7, by the Grace of God and your votes, the
NPP is elected to power, we shall make SHS free in our bid to
move Ghana forward. Thank you for your attention.
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