Free SHS has some challenges that must be addressed – Adei

Former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) Professor Stephen Adei has said that the free senior high school programme has some challenges that must be arrested. 

He indicated that there was a need to make the policy work better in terms of funding, and class sizes.

Speaking on the Hot Issues on TV3 on Sunday, December 22, he said: “I think that if the words are to be taken, what the president-elect is saying is on the right side that he is committed to the free secondary school, I think that we must take his word for it.”

He further indicated that “The free SHS has some challenges and they have to be addressed. We must look at it and see how we will make it work better in terms of funding, and class sizes. For example, no country can afford to have free SHS, almost 50 per cent of its children going to boarding schools, it is just too expensive, so there is a lot of room for tweaking it. If announced had said he was going to cancel free SHS I would have been on the streets.”

The President-elect earlier dismissed claims that he would cancel the free senior high school programme.

He described such comments as political gimmicks.

“There is no truth in that, it is just a political gimmick, free SHS has come to stay,” he said when he was addressing the clergy in Kumasi on Monday, November 11.

The New Patriotic Party had accused the NDC and John Mahama of plotting to cancel the free SHS programme.

For instance, Majority Leader Alexander Afennyo-Markin said that the National Democratic Congress were fighting the passage of the Free Senior High School Bill with their conduct in parliament leading to the indefinite adjournment of the House.

Afenyo-Markin accused the opposition lawmakers have targeted the Free SHS  Bill.