The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has called on students and youth to vote for a party with good educational policies, rather than the free education which has dominated headlines in the coming General Elections. The opposition New Patriotic Party flagbearer Nana Akufo-Addo has pledged to revise the policy of basic education and make it free to the Senior High School level. Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, Progressive People's Party (PPP) Presidential Aspirant also said motivating teachers was a central concern of the PPP’s free, continuous, compulsory education from kindergarten to Senior High School. The governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) led by incumbent President John Mahama said its policy to eradicate schools under trees, expand access to education and reduce education cost, is more comprehensive than merely abolishing payment of fees. However, NUGS has described as “pathetic that for close to a decade the lives of Ghanaian students have been used for experiment by our national leadership and our politicians seem to be operating on the same tangent”. “The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) sees the education of the Ghanaian child as a significant one that is why the Union sees issues such as; how to deliver quality education; provision of jobs for jobless graduates and unemployed non-students; how to rally funds to upgrade facilities and infrastructures in the existing schools and not free education as dominating in the coming General Election,” NUGS stated in a release on Thursday. “A tour on our various campuses shows signs of lack. It is not a lack of food but lack of quality tools, equipment and infrastructure that will motivate them to unleash their God-giving potential without which our nation-building agenda would be stunted. Education has become the reserve of the rich instead of the constitutional injunction that “education is a right not a privilege. There are still more schools in some major districts of our country that record zero per cent (0%) in our Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE); and there are some private school proprietors who have taken the habit of charging poor students huge money for their external examination registration since 2005 because of lack of clear-cut supervision by the Ghana Education Service,” NUGS lamented. The students' body maintained that “securing the promise of education for the Ghanaian students and youth will be our reason for taking part in this December polls. We must and will vote for a party with good educational policies and not junk”. NUGS therefore called on all students and youth to make their voices count come December, “else we will miss the opportunities that come with education as Ghanaian students and youth”.