This year’s presidential election was already hotly contested when NPP flag-bearer Nana Akufo-Addo announced free senior high school as the centerpiece of his platform, quickly establishing education as a top campaign issue. When the free SHS pledge started making waves among voters, the NDC went into a bit of a panic over the idea’s popularity. Ruling party members went on the offensive, questioning the fiscal and practical feasibility of the NPP plan and proposing an education plan of their own, which they claim will lead to faster development than the NPP’s. Education has become such a prominent issue that President Mahama spent significantly more time discussing NDC education proposals than any other topic at the NDC’s recent Manifesto Launch. The Electorate With so many eyes watching, what are the stakes of the education debate? Most Ghanaians recognize that educating the populace is an important step on the road to development. However, the NDC and the NPP each have big, loyal groups of constituents, roughly equal in numbers, who refuse to vote across party lines. For many of these loyalists, the education debate is just another opportunity to rally around the party: the phrase “Free SHS” has essentially become an NPP slogan and the practice of scorning the idea seems to be a favorite NDC pastime. In other words, a lot of voters are not paying very close attention to the arguments. While it’s unclear exactly what effect the education debate will have on the election’s outcome, the NDC and NPP alike are surely praying that their respective messages reach Ghana’s relatively few undecided voters. Comparing the Plans In both party manifestos, the promises regarding education reform range from fairly specific to so vague that they are practically meaningless. In addition to free SHS, a major feature of the NPP’s platform is the Teachers First initiative, geared towards addressing a deficit of 60,000 teachers, which would improve and expand training at all levels and increase teacher incentives, especially in rural areas. The NPP plans to increase the focus on literacy, numeracy, and ICT skills at the basic level and to integrate English and math into technical education curricula. The party’s manifesto also outlines plans to provide every basic school with ICT infrastructure, to expand and overhaul educational facilities, to channel infrastructure to underserved Muslim schools, and to ensure that each region has a modern, ICT-equipped library. An NPP administration would also involve the private sector in technical and tertiary programs to ease students’ transitions from school to the professional world and would expand non-traditional schooling options to help adults complete their educations. NDC officials have come out strongly against Akufo-Addo’s plan, projecting that free SHS will not be possible for twenty years and accusing the NPP of neglecting needs at the basic level in its drive to make SHS free. The typical NPP response has been that Akufo-Addo’s platform adequately addresses basic education and that the NDC lacks the ambition to develop Ghana quickly. The NDC’s manifesto outlines plans to strengthen the foundation laid during basic education and includes a kindergarten teacher training program that would equip teachers to better prepare students for primary school. At the basic level, the NDC aims to make education free, compulsory, and universally accessible, eliminate schools under trees, increase ICT instruction and infrastructure, expand public school feeding to all needy and rural communities, and construct more school buildings. The NDC would improve secondary education by constructing 200 community day schools, flooding existing SHSs with infrastructure improvements so that they can accommodate more students, and reducing the financial burden on parents through grants and subsidies. The party also pledges to increase access to vocational programs, establish 10 colleges of education to train teachers, upgrade all polytechnics into degree-awarding institutions, and establish a public university in the Eastern Region, the only region lacking one. The truth is that these platforms actually look quite similar. Both parties promise major infrastructure improvements, including construction projects for basic and secondary schools, and both also address the need for increased ICT training and infrastructure, especially at the basic level. Both address the shortage in the numbers and quality of teachers, with the NDC giving more specifics on its training plans and the NPP emphasizing that wages and incentives need to be adjusted. The principal differences between these plans are as follows: the NDC is more concerned with affordability at the basic level, the NPP at the secondary level. The NDC’s big push at the basic level will be focused on access and compulsory attendance, the NPP’s on literacy and numeracy instruction. The NPP talks more about alternative education for adults, the NDC about tertiary education, which barely appears in the NPP manifesto. While both manifestos address serious shortcomings in the education system, many of their component plans are extremely vague and neither party has offered many clues about how they will prioritize or implement many of their objectives. Regardless of which party wins this election, it’s unclear what the education sector will look like in 2016.