Free SHS policy not under review by GES – Opoku Mensah

Mr Yaw Opoku Mensah, Deputy Public Relations Officer (PRO) for the Ministry in charge of Education (MoE) has debunked allegations indicating the Ghana Education Service (GES) is reviewing the popular Free SHS policy.

Yaw’s comment comes after the Director-General of GES, Prof Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa in a discussion on JoyNews Upfront showsaid a review of the Free SHS program is underway to determine how much parents can pay.

The Executive Director of the Ghana Education Service (GES) told the Accra-based media house that a statistics team has been tasked to do what he described as unit cost analysis as far as educating a student is concerned.

“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. There are some items maybe we can ask parents to pay

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,” the Director-General told the host of ‘JoyNews Upfront’ show Raymond Acquah.

But, the deputy spokesman for the Ministry of Education (MoE), Opoku Mensah has urged members of the general public to disregard any publication of a review on the government’s flagship Free Senior High School (Free SHS) policy.

In an earlier presentation at the T. I. Ahmadiyya Secondary School ICT Week celebration, he said “the central government has no plans to review the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) program amid economic constraints.

“If you look at the posture of government in relation to free education, the government has rather expanded the program by introducing Free TVET with the same nature as the Grammar Schools,” he told students at the event.