There are commonly held assumptions by economic analysts that a nation’s economic indices are inflation, interest rates, GDP growth or the size of the economy. What they often forget is that education and employment play a key role in the political economy of nations, contributing to the unprecedented sense of economic and social progress. The unbreakable linkage between education, employment, economy and society is often lost on these analysts, not least politicians. In Ghana while inflation, interest rates and GDP growth are being touted by the government as some economic success, what is lost on them is the fact that literacy rate is dropping since independence. In 1960 the literacy rate was70%. That means 7 out of 10 people of Ghanaians then were educated to an appreciable level. I watched a BBC documentary on Ghana’s independence in which one of the visitors (a white guy) said what fascinated him about the then Ghana was that “everyone read the newspaper, even taxi drivers took time out of their schedule to read newspapers.” The story after 55 years is however different. In today’s Ghana the literacy rate has slipped to 50%. The reasons for this slip are not very difficult to fathom. It is the result of years of neglect by successive governments, the unnecessary politicization of education, including cheap punch interference for short term political gains, the gestation period of basic education in Ghana and finally the curriculum being taught (even in the short time basic education) not geared towards giving the students employable skills. While it has to be admitted that it has to take political action and will to drive educational policies in the right direction, we have to emphasise also that lack of these have been evident in many governments since independence. Since the massive push for mass education during the First Republic, which many Ghanaians now in positions of leadership are products of, there has not been any great governmental actions that have added value beyond the Free Compulsory Basic Education (FCUBE) and Girl Child Education implemented by President Kufuor. The other ingredient of Free School Feeding Program is equally commendable. To move education forward and to push for the 70% we inherited from the colonial government and even break that glass ceiling, certain positive actions must be taken. The first is that schooling must end with adequate literacy. That means every child who goes to school must only exit when they can read with understanding, write with fluency and gain one employable skill. This can only be done if we redefine basic education and raise the threshold of basic education to at least Senior High School level. The longer they stay in school the better the chances of being able to read write and gain the employable skill. The second is to revisit the curriculum content -what we refer to in Ghana as the “syllabus.” Not all children will be able to access science and arts aimed at higher level education. Those who do not have that academic acumen or interest must be given the tools to exit as SHS level or a college with a vocational skill. Technical and Vocational subjects, including ICT must be taught with the same vigour as the sciences and the arts subjects. The third and perhaps the most important action is the importance of the teacher to the whole literacy drive. We need to put the teacher at the heart and at the centre of the whole action plan. The training facilities, their conditions of service (including their medical wellbeing) must be looked at within the context of sustainability. A bottom up teacher training, including their continuous professional development must be created to ensure that that the teacher is well equipped, and well motivated to educate the students. This is a must and cannot be emphasised enough. The fourth action and the biggest one for parents is the cost of education. The Vice President, Mr. John Mahama recently seemed to imply that the problem of education in Ghana is not affordability but that of accessibility. This means the problem is where to find schools to attend and not the cost of school fees. I beg to differ strongly on that point. While governments must continue to build schools to meet the growing population, we must never lose sight of the fact that most students who drop out of school do so because of parents’ inability to fund their schooling. With high rate of poverty levels across the country, affordability is perhaps the biggest problem facing education in Ghana. With government absorbing school fees up to JHS with the Capitation Grant, the next step will be for the government to absorb school fees up to SHS, if it is to be made part of basic education. If we strip this argument of all political biases, it is an incontrovertible fact positive government action ought to go this way. School fees must be free across the country in all public schools and it is the least that we can do for the children of today as a testimony to the fact that we now produce and sell crude oil in commercial quantity. In all developed economies, the main driving factors have been free education up to secondary or high school levels. In UK, as part of their Welfare State Package in 1948, the free National Health Service and Free Secondary Education became the main hallmarks. In USA, productivity shot up to unimaginable level when they introduced free education to High School level. In the recent State of the Union address President Obama gave an order that no child must be made to leave school until the age of 18. Globalization and international trade requires countries and their economies to compete with each other. Economically successful countries will hold competitive and comparative advantages over other economies, though a single country rarely specializes in a particular industry. This means that the country's economy will be made of various industries that will have different advantages and disadvantages in the global marketplace. The education and training of a country's workers is a major factor in determining just how well the country's economy will do. With about 500 public SHSs in Ghana with an average school population of 1000, it will not be beyond us as a nation to prioritize resources to cater for free secondary education. On accessibility and freeing up school places, we may need to rethink boarding schools in the future and begin to gear our energies towards day secondary education in Ghana. Again in order not to open up our education to cheap shot political punches as we have found in this “3-year then 4y-year and back to 3-year SHS political football”, any free education policy must be backed or ring-fenced by an Act of Parliament. In 2000 the percentage of our GDP spent on education was 4.4. By 2008 it had risen to 9.17%. In 2011 the percentage on education has slipped back to 7.57. This fluctuation has been possible because each government has spent on education based on its own priority. The cost of education is so important that we should not leave it to governments to decide. It is our collective public and civic responsibility to ensure that it becomes a priority. The only way to do this is to ring-fence the percentage of our GDP to be spent on education with law i.e. Act of Parliament. At the moment, the political tittle-tattle of how many schools have been removed from under trees, or how many trees have been removed from schools, who is wearing the better Ghana school uniforms and how many have been distributed, all reduce education policy to cheap political shots. Whether school feeding serves a better purpose at Hamile or Half-Assini is nothing more than political point scoring. They do not go to the root of the policy problems we have in education. I will end with the famous quote by Derek Bok “if you think education is expensive, try ignorance”. Thanks for reading