The results of this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) have been reported to be the worst in five years.
It is a reality which has gotten parents, policymakers of today and yesterday thinking and wondering what could have informed the anomaly.
While some are imputing political undertones, others think that the markers were too hard on the kids, the latter sounding somewhat outlandish and balderdash.
Be it as it may, we are tempted or even constrained to look at the sad anomaly from the angle of the management of the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy. We cannot detach the subject from politics because we live in a system where running down policies of our predecessors is a feature of governance. The policy of continuum has all but faded into oblivion, which makes us to operate in an unproductive merry-go-round.
The new government inherited a policy, the Free SHS, it was not comfortable with in the first place anyway. This prompted all manner of questions from politics-inclined Ghanaians as to whether or not the policy was going to continue or aborted. Indeed, the subject found space in the campaign of both the then opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).
In the face of not being able to abort the policy outright, government would do all it can to thwart it using methods which can best be described as subtle, was the thought of many observers.
Occurrences in the educational sector provided adequate fodder for cynics to take the government to the cleaners on the subject, posturing from government actors pointing at that direction.
The public pointed at the many wrong steps taken in managing the admission process into the senior high schools since the current government took over the mantle of leadership of the country as a clear indication about the direction of education at the SHS level.
With the nosedive performance of the recent WASSCE, those holding on the assumption that the fault is attributable to failed government management of the system have something to hold on to, which is worrying.
One of the interventions by the previous government was the provision of past questions papers gratis to students to prime them for the examinations ahead. It would be recalled that this intervention was subjected to ridicule by those opposed to the Free SHS policy.
Let us as citizens of a country which believes in development through quality education resolve to rid this sector of partisan politics.
We should interrogate the relative poor performance so that we do not witness a future recurrence.
A national conversation on the subject is necessary at this stage and not an extensive blame-game which cannot reverse the fate that has befallen the educational sector.
Something went wrong and we should find out what it was so measures can be taken to remedy it.