On December 7, 2024, the Ghanaian people went to the polls in accordance with our constitutional democratic governance process to elect new Presidents and MPs.
In the 2024 election referred to by many analysts as the most consequential in the nation’s electoral politics under the 4th Republic, the electorates returned the most emphatic electoral victory for the NDC and its Presidential Candidate, President John D. Mahama with a vote margin of about 1.6 million.
Post-election analysis has referred to the verdict as a bloodbath rejection of the then-incumbent regime led by President Akuffo Addo and former Vice President Alhaji M. Bawumia for their unsatisfactory handling of the economy, soaring food prices, untold hardship, destruction of citizen savings and investment through cruel DDEP and environmental destruction, dying educational system among others.
One of the leading policies of the NDC-John Mahama Reset Agenda was the ambitious proposal to carry out an essential reform of the educational system including curriculum, infrastructure and financing.
President John Mahama upon his assumption to office began the process of forming a Cabinet and nominated Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, a seasoned politician, legislator, policy maker and also one of the nation’s once foremost student activists to lead the implementation of the President’s ambitious educational agenda.
At the swearing-in ceremony, President Mahama specifically charged the new Minister for Education to lead a national review conference on education to improve educational outcomes and equip youth with employable skills.
Barely less than a month in office as Minister for Education, Hon. Haruna has had to face the tough conversation around the future of teacher trainee allowance in which he has stated the non-justification of the continual payment of the allowance.
Contrary to the pre-2016 election era where the NDC were clear in its disapproval of the trainee allowance, the party in both the 2020 and 2024 elections maintained a position to continue to pay the allowance while building a responsive and sustainable student loan in addressing tertiary education financing aid needs.
In this article, I have attempted to make a strong case as to why Ghana cannot continue to feed grown adults through an allowance scheme which has also proven ineffective, unresponsive and unsustainable.
Historical fact revealed that the trainee allowance was introduced in 1960 by President Kwame Nkrumah to entice secondary school graduates to attend trainee college to produce the much-required teachers for the nation’s basic education.
The policy was however abolished in the 1970s and was restored in the 80s after the nation lost many of its teachers to the mass exodus to Nigeria in the hope to benefit from the country’s new oil economy.
The teacher trainee education has evolved from certificate awarding institution to a diploma and finally to a four-year Bachelor of Education degree-awarding institution.
In 2012, the Government passed the College of Education Act (Act 847) as part of its broad policy reform measures to convert and upgrade the College of Education into a full University College with the object of improving quality and enhancing the efficiency of the management of education service delivery.
Subsequently, in 2014 the then-Mahama NDC Government announced the replacement of trainee allowance with the student loan trust fund thereby directing new entrants into the colleges with financial difficulties to opt for student loans while continuous students were maintained on the allowance scheme until their completion.
The Government defended its position stating that the allowance scheme had become a constraint in training the required teachers in the face of budget rigidities. It further claimed that the year after the allowance replacement, the overall number of trainees in the colleges had increased from 9000 to 15000 following the relaxation of the quota arrangement against the admission capacity of the schools.
The Akuffo Addo NPP new administration restored the trainees’ allowance in fulfilment of its electoral promise albeit not in its original form following its electoral victory in 2016. I will later demonstrate why I have made the point that the allowance restored varied from the initial version paid until its replacement with the student loan scheme.
Immediately after this new development, the conversation around the teacher trainee allowance took an intense partisan outlook with the NPP chastising the NDC for demonstrating insensitiveness while eulogising itself for the allowance restoration.
This ultimately buried any sensible discourse around the future of college of education and tertiary education financing aid schemes that are more sustainable and reliable. The period following allowance restoration by the NPP regime witnessed the most erratic performance of the scheme as at all material times, beneficiaries were owed several arrears causing frequent agitation and complaints.
Now let me proceed to offer my perspective as to why President Mahama-led NDC Government should bury the already dead allowance scheme and rather pursue a more equitable, sustainable and reliable financial aid scheme that does not unduly constrain the amount of funds expended on basic education.
The teacher trainee allowance was introduced with an object or intent that does not suffice in the current educational realities. The allowance was introduced to incentivise students to attend college of education for the nation to produce the required professional teachers which were in short supply at the time.
At the moment access to teacher education has expanded beyond the public college of education (about 48) to include Public Universities such as UCC, UEW and other private colleges and universities that run teacher education-related programs.
There are thousands of graduate teachers commonly referred to as backlog who remain yet to be posted despite the Government’s poorly thought-through implementation of the teacher licensure certification meant to categorise many of the graduates as ineligible to be recruited.
Quite related to the above is the issue of equity which must always be applied in pro-poor state intervention like the trainee allowances. Tell me where equity lies for Bachelor of Education Students in the colleges of education to be offered allowance while their sister colleagues in the public universities like Winneba and Cape Coast are deprived of same and offered only the option of student loan.
Since the introduction of the allowance scheme in the CoE, can anyone point to verifiable public data that suggest only students of CoEs are the most marginalised or below the extreme poverty line and that students of public universities like UEW and UCC are mostly within the middle class and elites’ categories? Such a finding obviously does not exist, and it is the same reason why the continual payment of the allowance remains untenable in the face of these inequalities.
According to a Graphic Online story published on August 17 2017, the restored allowance for a month was GH¢248 less than the GH¢452 the trainees were receiving after deductions before the allowance was scrapped in the 2013/2014 academic year by the previous government.
While there is very little public data on the current amount paid, reports indicate the figure hasn’t changed for the better and at the same time payments are always in prolonged arrears which is telling of how unreliable the entire allowance scheme is.
Let me refer to the venerable Kofi Asare, the Executive Director of Edu-Watch who asked a similar question; show me how an erratic allowance paid mostly belated prevents a trainee from not dropping out of school or at least that makes his/her campus living better.
Instead of us to continue with our usual antics and pretensions in favour of a scheme that is grappling with chronic paralysis and also lost its relevance within the current educational financing realities, let’s rather build a strong campaign for a total overhaul of our tertiary education financial aid regime and give way to a new financing model that is equitable, robust, responsive, transparent and sustainable.
Let’s shun away from a financing aid model that categorises every student as needy and fight for one that offers the real needy the opportunity to seek aid either as a grant through scholarship or as loans through the SLTF.
As Kofi Asare has posited, consider there is an established effective “No Fee Stress-free AFUF intervention (with an option for those who can pay ) for Year 1 tertiary students including colleges which cost the Govt approximately ¢2.5k per head and an average ¢4k per year student loan scheme that can sponsor 40% of all tertiary students where the loan is disbursed in two tranches at the beginning of each semester.”
Data from EduWatch estimates that ¢550m is required; the same amount budgeted for the teacher and nurses trainees’ allowance whether needy or not.
At least the lesson of the Covid-19 pandemic era where we were given three-month utility freebies only for the state to reel its ugly face later to take in millions from us through harsh tax measures like the Covid levy, borla tax should teach us that politician-sponsored freebies will always come with more severe consequences to the ordinary people.
As Hon. Haruna Iddrisu lead the national Education review process, I charge him and his team to give us interconnected, responsive and sustainable financing aid models like SLTF and Scholarships in the form of grants and not the usual ailing allowance.
May this country take the most sensible, futuristic, sustainable solutions as we begin the implementation of the Reset Agenda in our education sector.
Authored by: Evans Senior Owu, YALI & EPL Ghana-trained Young Leader and Good Governance Activist.
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