It is better to educate children under trees, than stay at home- Ghana Vice President

Ghana’s Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, says ”It is better to educate children under trees than making them stay home.”

His comments followed criticism on the country’s double-track system in Senior High School(SHS) education. Addressing an audience at the Kumasi Town Hall meeting today, Ghana’s vice president raised concerns on the need to give children an education even if physical structures are unavailable.

“The question that we faced when we tried implementing this free SHS policy was if we do not have enough infrastructure. How can we tell whose child should stay at home and whose child should go to school? In response to this challenge, we introduced the innovative double track system as a temporary solution to the problem while we introduce new schools. This is a temporary solution while we build more and more schools to do this so I will say it is better to educate a child even under a tree than to let them be sitting at home.”

“Those who are criticizing the double-track system have not been able to offer one alternative. They will just say I will abolish the double track but they will not tell you what they will replace it with and they cannot tell you because abolishing double-track means abolishing free SHS,” Dr Bawumia said.