Prof Ivan Addae Approch the government to review the Free SHS policy

A former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Emeritus Ivan Addae-Mensah, has approached the government to reconsider the execution of the free senior high school (SHS) strategy to guarantee its manageability.

He recommended that the government ought to fall back on cost sharing, where guardians who could bear the cost of it would pay for their youngsters' education.

He said such an action would guarantee that poor and penniless students profited from the liberality of the exceptional.

Right now, the government is the sole lender of the strategy, a circumstance the former V-C said had prompted a few difficulties to the smooth organization of the schools, particularly taking care of and boarding offices.

Prof. Emeritus Addae-Mensah settled on the decision at the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Lecture coordinated by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS) in Accra.

The lecture on the subject: "Education reforms in Ghana and their impact on the youth", framed piece of exercises remembering the current year's Pioneer's Seven day stretch of the GAAS.

The lecture, which happens in November consistently, was founded in 1971 as the Commemoration Lecture however was renamed the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Lecture in 2003.

Different exercises arranged for the remembrance of the week are symposia on effective issues and lectures by colleagues of the GAAS on many issues, like education, the humanities and the sciences.

Plaques were divulged to pay tribute to Dr Nkrumah, Dr J.B. Danquah and a few colleagues (living and dead) who have added to the development of the academy.

Perceptions

Prof. Addae-Mensah said "on a basic level, no resident will say the free SHS is a terrible strategy", however said it was one thing taking a striking choice and one more issue assembling an approach and modalities to make such a drive economical.

"On the off chance that the strategy producer races into the arrangement without an intensive assessment of its implications, the result might end up being heartbreaking.

"What is so hallowed about the free SHS that makes our Leader reliably decline to pay attention to popular assessment and keep on adhering to a strategy that is clearly confronting significant moves and carrying difficulties to its recipients, rather than the help that the approach should bring?

"Indeed, even the Finance Minister, who should make the assets accessible for its execution, at first scrutinized the reasoning behind specific parts of the strategy," he said.

Prof. Addae-Mensah spoke to the President to pay attention to general assessment and have another glance at the arrangement, its execution and repercussions on the individual and the country.

The former vice-chancellor referenced the difficulties perplexing the execution of the arrangement as financing, expansion in enrolment and its impact on quality, deficient framework and unfortunate educator inspiration.

"There is a contrast among optimism and practicality. Dr Nkrumah in a perfect world prefered free education, yet he was practical enough not to present it at the time that he was in power," he said.

Prof Addae-Mensah, who is likewise a former Vice-President (Sciences) of the GAAS, took his crowd through very nearly a two-hour show on educational reforms in the country, from the pilgrim time, the pre-and post-freedom period under Dr Nkrumah to the ongoing educational circumstance.

Six-year SHS

He further forewarned the government against carrying out another pilot plot on the expansion of the length of SHS education from the ongoing three to six years.

"I genuinely trust this won't be foisted on us without complete and open public conversation and examination. We can't stand to play with the fate of the youth with such regular ordered trials," he added.