President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says his government’s Free senior high school (SHS) education policy has bolstered the confidence of Ghanaians in education.
He said the policy has saved the education of at least 100,000 students who would have stayed home because of the financial status of their parents.
The President told residents in the Upper West Region Tuesday, the country would have been grappling with over one million Ghanaian youth whose education would have been truncated at the junior high school (JHS) within five years.
But the Free SHS policy has seen an additional 90,000 JHS graduates entering SHSs of their choice.
At least over 400,000 JHS graduates are expected to benefit from the policy following their performance in the 2017 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
No first-year student will be made to pay any other fees apart from the Parent Teachers Association (PTA) fees, which the Education Ministry has said is not compulsory.
Some headmasters have been sacked and others interdicted after they were found to have made some financial demands on fresh students and their parents before admission.
The programme has faced some challenges since it was rolled out including late disbursement of funds to heads of institutions.
But President Akufo-Addo said his government will continue to fine-tune the programme until all the challenges are eliminated.
“We will deal with the challenges [and] make sure it works for the benefit of our future,” he said, soliciting the support of Ghanaians to make the policy a success.