Free SHS and other govt flagship programmes to be reviewed – Info. Minister

• Posted on May 25, 2023May 25, 2023
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

The Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has disclosed that the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s government is open for a review of all its sixteen flagship programmes.

According to the Minister, this will include the popular ‘Free SHS’ policy.

Speaking to Accra based Joy FM, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said the ‘Free SHS’ policy is in its early stages and it is open for a review after a number of years.

Mr. Oppong Nkrumah said from the onset, government had emphatically stated that the Free SHS will not be for a select few but for all students who passed the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

“I think right from the beginning government said that we were not going to start the Free Senior High School programme by targeting some and excluding some and that indeed all of those who qualified for senior high school were going to be beneficiaries.

“I think therefore that it is not news if somebody comes to view that the targeting is poor because we ourselves have said from the beginning that we are actually not going to be starting off by targeting anybody,” he said.

“If you compare to what they did in some states in America, this is how they started it and as the year went by then some more targeting was done. Which is exactly what we have announced from the 21^st of March, 2020,” he said.

Mr Nkrumah continued that “moving forward, all sixteen flagship programmes will be up for review so that if you have to now amend some of them or re-target some of them, then were get into that space.”

His comments come off the back of the criticism by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which described the ‘Free SHS’ policy as poorly targeted.

The Fund made this observation in its latest country report on Ghana, whose request for a $3 billion bailout it recently approved.

According to the report, the Free SHS programme “which covers the full cost of secondary education, has helped increase enrollment but is poorly targeted.”