A Deputy Ranking Member on the Education Committee of Parliament Dr. Clement Apaak has disagreed with the call by the Education Minister Dr. Osei Adutwum on Ghanaians to focus only on the positives of the free Senior High School policy.
The Minister raised concerns at a recent event over how some individuals have criticised the policy and it’s implementation strategy.
The minister believes we have to focus on the positives of the policy and stop focusing on the negatives.
He made remarks during a symposium titled ‘The Free SHS Story,” organised by the Ministry of Education at the UPSA Auditorium.
He also claimed that the policy has played a role in shaping the nation’s economy by nurturing 21st-century manpower.
He therefore asked Ghanaians and critics to focus on the positives, but in a sharp rebuttal, Dr. Apaak, who represents constituents of Builsa South, disagrees.
He disagreed with the Minister on the grounds that the free SHS initiative is a public policy being implemented with taxpayer money; hence, when it is faced with challenges, it ought to be criticised so it will be improved.
He argued that the policy is supposed to benefit the people of Ghana, and therefore there are stakeholders, including students, teachers, parents, and the broader Ghanaian community, who all have an interest in ensuring that the policy is better implemented to meet its objectives.
The rest of the statekeholders he mentioned cannot be wrong in highlighting what the minister says are negatives.
“In fact, I am even surprised the Minister will choose to use the word negative. The conversations that have gone on since the coming into being of the free SHS have centred around challenges, and those challenges are self-evident. So when stakeholders speak to the challenges to do with inadequate academic and residential infrastructure, inadequate furniture, and challenges to do with food arrangements, I don’t think that that is wrong, because these are the realities. And we speak to the challenges because it is our expectation that those challenges would be addressed holistically.
And so I disagree with the minister when he says that we focus on the negatives. Nobody is thinking about negatives. We speak about challenges. I think it is rather unfortunate that the Minister sees the attention that we are drawing to the challenges with the hope that collectively we can address them to make the programme better. So I disagree with him entirely.”
Source: rainbowradioonline.com
