The Southern Student: A Victim of the Injustices of the Policy

Participants of this Factor expressed their misgivings of the seemingly injustices in the implementation of the policy. They considered the policy as being unfair in the sense that southern students who are admitted in northern schools were not fairly treated sometimes. One of the statements that this group of participants did agree to a larger extent was: “One negative effect of the scheme is how the fee-paying students are also asked to go home as a result of the delay in releasing the feeding grant,’’ with a z-score of 1.168 as shown in Table 10.

All students from the South who are schooling in northern schools had to pay full fees once they are not beneficiaries of the policy. A southern student who participated in this study and who forms part of this factor shared her concerns in this regard:

That is the major problem, anytime there is failure to pay grants of northerners, it affects we the Southerners as well which shouldn’t be so because we have paid our money in full so we

ought to benefit. Schools across the country are the same and they impart the same knowledge, it depends on you the individual to make the distinction. So, I don’t have a problem attending a northern school and paying full fees as a southerner.

I understand, but the only problem is when feeding grants of northern schools are not paid it affects the Southern students which should not be so. (SS 2, 21.09.2016)

Disagree Neutral Agree

-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4

27 4 2 1 7 5 6 12 3

30 24 20 11 10 9 8 14 31

33 21 23 15 16 13 18

32 25 17 22 19

28 29 26

Figure 8: Factor Array of Factor Three

Source: Field work (2016)

Table 10: Factor Three Extreme Ranking Statements with High and Low Z-scores

No. Statements Z-score

3 Delays in the release of funds for the scheme affect contact hours 1.799 and invariably academic performance of students

31 We devise some strategies to cover the contact hours lost as a 1.790 result of the school closing down because of delay in receiving the

feeding grant

12 One negative effect of the scheme is how the fee-paying students 1.168 are also asked to go home as a result of the delay in releasing the

feeding grant

18 When we try hard, we will be able to identify parents who can pay 1.093 their wards’ school fees in the North for the policy to be targeted

at the very poor

14 Respective Governments do not have the political will to scrap the 1.059 scholarship scheme.

24 Government should not continue to waste money on the scheme -1.104 when the WASSCE pass rate of students in the three regions in the

North is not encouraging

33 It is high time northern parents sat-up to pay for the secondary -1.442 education of their children

4 It is better to scrap the Northern Scholarship Scheme in order to -1.444 have a smooth flow of academic work

30 Poverty is the main factor that created the gap between the North -1.494 and the South but not necessarily lack of interest of parents to

send their children to school

27 The Northern elite should have rejected Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s -2.169 Northern Scholarship Scheme which was meant to woo them into

independence with the South Source: Field work (2016)

When I tried to get varied views on this matter, I asked one of the Northern students who is part of this factor what her take was and she sounded sympathetic to her southern collogues:

I do agree with them but it is because their population is often not much in the Northern schools that is why the teachers cannot retain and teach them alone. But I think something must be done

about that because they are getting affected by the Northern Scholarship problem yet do not benefit from it. Since they have paid their fees in full, they must be privileged to enjoy what they have paid for, so those times that northerners would be asked to go home for feeding grants not paid, the Southerners should be in school having their lessons because they have paid for it but they are made to go home with us and lose something they have paid for. (SS 1, 11.07.2016)

One thing that was clear with regard to this issue was that, many respondents agreed that it was unfair that southern students are made to suffer the consequences of the delays in releasing the feeding grant. They strongly felt bad about this phenomenon but however said there was nothing much they could do about it since the said students were not that many. One of the headmasters of the secondary schools had this to say:

[…] that is morally not right and it is an abuse of the minority by the majority. But there is no way you can isolate them and handle them differently. Because they are so insignificant in numbers in various schools (RE 26, 24.08.2016).

Hiding behind numbers to sweep the concerns of the Southern students (even if they are few) under the carpet should be a point to note:

what I know is that this calibre of students are just a few, but even if it was only one student it is an infringement on the person’s rights…one day somebody will sue the school on this matter in court and the person will win the case. (SHUE, 10, 26.09.2016)

One of the students from the South could not hide his frustration about the poor quality of food served in the dining hall. Most often, this problem comes from the delay in the release of feeding grants as earlier on mentioned. She shared her sentiment:

Why should we be made to suffer this way when we have paid our fees? I belief our colleagues who are enrolled in the Southern schools would not face this problem because it is not government that will give their feeding grant. I guess if any of the Northern students were in our situation, they will feel the same way. This is actually not fair! We sometimes unfairly suffer silently. I do not know what the authorities can do about it. I strongly think we should let our voices be heard that we are being treated unjustly. In the first place, you say we should not enjoy the policy because we are coming from regions that are better off in the South which our parents agreed and are ready to pay our school fees. I call this a double agony (SS 3, 30.10.2016).

This was a general challenge that school administrators had to deal with. The numbers of southern students schooling in the north were very low that they could not be treated separately when there were challenges with the implementation of the NSS. This category of students were therefore “silent sufferers” of the ills of the policy.