Some education experts have touted the government’s flagship programme – the Free Senior High School programme as a very policy which must be maintained with the right investment.
According to the experts, the Free SHS policy has been very helpful in ensuring a good baseline education for the youth in the country.
Speaking with Kwaku Nhyira-Addo on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Tuesday (13 September), the director general of the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration, Michael Boakye-Yiadom, said, “Free SHS has been very helpful for ensuring a good baseline education for our youth … This is the fact and the benefit will no doubt be felt by posterity.”
“I will suggest that we keep on the Free SHS but that we also have a conversation as to reviewing it to identify shortfalls and ways to shore them up,” Boakye-Yiadom added.
Also, Ama Serwaa Nerquaye-Tetteh, the secretary general, Ghana Commission for UNESCO said, “I believe that the Free SHS should be upheld while still being put under regular scrutiny to find other ways to evolve it to the benefit of our young ones.”
Watch the video below for the full discussion:
“IMF bailout will not affect Free SHS”
Meanwhile, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said the assistance the government is seeking from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will not affect flagship pro-poor policies.
According to Akufo-Addo, the ongoing pro-poor policies are at the heart of the government since 2017, and remain non-negotiable items of the country’s public expenditure, and, as such, will not be affected by Ghana’s re-engagement with the IMF.
Describing it as a relatively easy assurance to give, Akufo-Addo referred to the statement by the IMF country director who indicated that an initiative like the Free SHS programme cannot be sacrificed on the altar of a programme with the Bretton Woods institution.
“So, all our minds are going in the same direction, and I’m very, very confident that these programmes, especially the Free SHS, Free TVET programme will emerge from the programme with the fund intact,” Akufo-Addo made this known on Friday (5 August 2022) on UAR Radio in Bolgatanga, at the start of his working visit to the Upper East Region.
“I think there is something that a lot of people are forgetting. When we came into office, we were into an IMF programme in 2017. In fact, before we exited the IMF, Free SHS was introduced in the September of my first term in office, a whole nine months of my coming under an IMF programme. So, it is already been accommodated within the thinking of the fund programme for Ghana.”
He added, “It is (Free SHS) not as if it is something that we had to wait to exit the programme before we brought it. We brought it at the time we were under an IMF programme, and I will find it very illogical for us to have a programme we started under an IMF programme and because we are going to have a new one sacrifice it. That doesn’t make sense, and it will not happen.”
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