Free SHS under review – GES

According to the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Prof. Kwasi Opoku Amankwah, the government is currently reviewing the Free Senior High School policy.

He said this is to determine how much parents should pay to help reduce the burden on them.

He said, “…we can do the analysis and then come up and say that, ok, to give Raymond quality education, it will cost this much. Within that cost, these are the items in the cost.”

“Then we will all put it out there and say this item, we can make do of it, and it will not affect quality, this item, I think we can get parents to pay,” Opoku Amankwah said on Joy FM.

However, the Deputy Minister for Finance, Abena Osei-Asare refuted claims regarding the Free Senior High School policy and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout.

She said the government’s programmes like the free SHS, and Agenda 111 among others, will not be scrapped.

“From 2017 to 2019, we still implemented the school feeding under an IMF programme and we even expanded it. In 2017 when we came it was around 1.3 million children [benefiting from school feeding], but in 2019 we had moved to almost two million children under the IMF programme.

“In September 2017 under an IMF programme, we did implement Free Senior High School programme,” she said.