Flashback to Electioneering 2012. To counter the New Patriotic Party's "Free SHS Now" campaign, the ruling National Democratic Congress claimed it was not feasible for lack of space, and that it was a gimmick to hoodwink the electorate for their vote.

Instead, the NDC proposed a 200 new community SHS expansion programme, and an additional 10 new colleges of education, that it claimed were necessary before free SHS would become viable.

Following his disputed declaration as the winner of the 2012 presidential election, President John Dramani Mahama has named three NDC veterans who served in the NDC cabinet of President Jerry John Rawlings to oversee this massive educational expansion programme.

As the trio, dubbed the "3 Wise Men" by the media, await mobilisation, a 14-man Forum for Education Reform (FFER) has called on the government to abandon the idea of new colleges of education, and rather expand facilities in the existing 38 colleges of education, as "a more cost effective and efficient way to achieving government's laudable objective of improving teacher education."

Chaired by Sir Sam Jonah, and including two women, FFER, which is sponsored by IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, stressed: "This would expand capacity and improve quality with less public expenditure."

In an era of ballooning budget deficits, FFER's cost effectiveness and efficiency approach is commonsensical. But, The Chronicle thinks some strategically sited new colleges of education should still be built.

There is said to be an acute shortage of teachers across the country, which started building up, following the government's short-sighted closure of 10 teacher training colleges during the 2nd Republic. Expansion of existing facilities would largely cure that.

But, it would not address the refusal of teachers to accept posting to rural areas. As a result, "pupil teachers", usually middle school and SHS leavers without formal teacher training, are the people teaching in the villages. Mostly on the lookout for better opportunities, these pupil teachers abandon post at short notice, often with no replacements for months, if not years.

This is where The Chronicle believes the new colleges could be deployed. As is being done with the Ghanaian doctors the government is sponsoring in Cuba, new colleges of education should be sited outside the regional or district capitals, with a certain quota of entrants being admitted on scholarship and bonded to serve in the surrounding villages, upon graduation, for a minimum of, say, five years.

Of course, quality is always an important consideration in manpower development. But the concept of improving quality for the few, while the majority has nothing at all, is inequitable in a republican democracy.

The Chronicle does not think that fear of public expenditure should be used as an excuse not to procure the public good, especially, in education. After all, politicians of whatever colouration in power in election years, waste billions of public funds in an attempt to keep themselves in office.

Most of the current colleges of education were set up in the 1st Republic, if not earlier. No money spent on educational facilities would ever become a waste.

More colleges of education, please!