There need to be discussions about the sustainability of the Free SHS – IMF’s Dr Touna-Mama
Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amakwah, Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), has indicated his outfit is ready to contribute to a review of the Free Senior High School policy.
“Once education is not only for the GES and Ministry of Education, it will be played into the bigger discussion for all of us to make our contributions,” he said.
Prof Amankwah said the GES will commence with the smaller parts of the policy and that there have been discussions on the unit cost analysis of education.
“We will do unit cost analysis, especially for the Free SHS,” he said on Joy News’ Upfront.
Prof Amankwah added that: “When we have done that, and we have all added our inputs into it, then we can all come back and say the total cost for educating someone in the free SHS is this or that”.
He said this is necessary so that, “at the end of the day, we can all agree that this is the amount that we believe that government should bear”.
The Free SHS policy is under scrutiny because of problems with feeding and to an extent infrastructural challenges.
These issues have led some schools to consider shutting down because they struggle to feed their students.
High schools have struggled with a shortage of food items because of funding and supply constraints.
Though major policy restructuring is expected under the Free SHS policy, the IMF’s Resident Representative to Ghana, Dr Albert Touna-Mama, indicated that the policy will not be cancelled.
But Dr Touna-Mama acknowledged concerns about the efficiency of the policy and said there need to be conversations about how to make it more sustainable.
