Review free SHS policy – Eduwatch tells government
Education think thank Africa Education Watch is calling for a second look into the feeding component of the Free Senior High School programme.
Kofi Asare, Executive Director of the Africa Education Watch, reiterated that the current system should be critically looked at to allow parents who can afford to pay, to bear the feeding cost.
His opinion comes on the back of reports of food shortages in some public senior high schools.
A situation which has forced some heads of schools to consider shutting down their schools if the government fails to intervene.
Speaking on some interventions to stop the annual occurrence, Kofi Asare said it was high time the government reviewed the feeding component of the free senior school policy.
“It should be possible to means-test the students and ask children of middle-to-higher income-earning Ghanaians to pay,” he said.
Mr Asare also said the issue of food shortages in SHS should not be blamed on the Education Ministry, but rather on the Ministry of Finance over its failure to release enough funds to pay food suppliers.
“The solution is having a system that ensures that the Minister of Finance will disburse an average of GH¢100 every month to oil the food distribution and most importantly, clear the about GH¢320 million backlogs.”
This allows suppliers to have the resources to buy and supply, Mr Asare stressed.
“Until that problem has been addressed, we will all be trying our best to manage the symptom of a problem.”
