GES reviewing Free SHS to determine how much parents can pay – Prof Opoku Amankwah
Prof. Kwesi Opoku Amankwa, The Director – General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), has publicly stated the government’s flagship Free SHS is already under review.
He made this public during an interview on JoyNews monitored by Ghana Education News. The head of the GES while answering questions on Free SHS said the ongoing review is to help determine how much fees parents have to pay under the policy.
“…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,” he told host of Upfront, Raymond Acquah.
This revelation by the Director–General of the Ghana Education Service contradicts the government’s position about reviewing the Free SHS. The Minister of Education is on record to have stated that reviewing the Free SHS would defeat its purpose.
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The government has indicted that the IMF has described the Free SHS as a novelty and President Nana Addo has further added his voice to the issue and said he was not going to cancel the Free SHS to ensure every Ghanaian youth gets access to secondary education for the dreams of students and the human resource needs of the country to be realized.
The Finance Ministry in a statement earlier this month indicated that the policy will not be suspended despite seeking support from the IMF; the IMF will be concerned about possible lack of finance and the ability of government to sustain its expenditure.
The GES boos further revealed that the review process is nowhere near the conclusion, but was quick to add that a key component of the review is geared at ensuring a cost arrangement that ensures quality.
“The review will determine how much parents will pay for their wards”, Prof added.
The government of the day wants to ensure no student pays a penny for secondary education hence the name Free SHS policy, how will the policy be called if parents will now have to pay some fees and how different will it be from the NDCs progressively free policy which was abandoned by the Nana Addo led government in 2017?
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Source: Ghana Education News
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