Free SHS funding challenges exist and govt must accept them – IFEST

Free SHS funding challenges exist, and the government must accept them, according to the Executive Director of the Institute for Education Services (IFEST), Dr. Peter Anti.

He furthered that until the government accepts the existence of the Free SHS funding challenges, there can be no progress and no result-oriented effort towards dealing with the issue.

In his view, the citizens can complain and outline the challenges confronting the Free SHS policy; however, since they do not have the power to make the necessary changes that will resolve the challenges, nothing meaningful can be achieved from the complaints.

His Free SHS Funding Challenges Exist statement is a fallout from the blackout that hit Accra Academy after the ECG cut the power supply to the school for the GHS480,000 debt owed to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) since July 2023.

Speaking on JoyNews, he stated that the government should have anticipated an increase in enrollment when the free SHS programme was introduced.

“While we were doing double track, we should have made a conscious effort to improve the infrastructure in our schools. Now that we don’t know what is happening, we decided to go and do other kinds of projects within the same education sector,” he said on Tuesday.

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Dr. Anti believes that the leaders of Ghana’s educational system need to take responsibility for the challenges facing the system and work to find solutions.

“They hold the answer to the challenges that we are facing, and until they accept that it is a challenge, we are going to continue with the talking, the interaction, and the complaints. I know schools where parents are contributing money to go and pay for pre-paid. I know schools where parents are contributing money to tile the dormitories because the dormitories look like an untarred road,” he said.

“I know schools where parents are contributing money to buy beds. Why should it be so? Because the money that we should use to continue to provide these things for the school is not coming.”

Read: ECG Disconnects Lights From Accra Academy Over Debt

The executive director of IFEST argues that relying solely on government funding for free SHS is not a sustainable solution.

He added that secondary schools need additional sources of funding beyond what the government can provide.

“For me, I don’t care where it is coming from, but so far as it’s going to support the implementation of a policy that enables my children to attend secondary school for free, I think that we need to pursue that particular tangent,” he said.

Story Originally Sourced from Myjoyonline.com