Over 3,000 students are expected to benefit from government’s free Senior High School (SHS) education policy, the Deputy Minister in charge of Tertiary Institutions, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has said.
The free SHS policy was the main campaign message of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2012 general elections; a policy which was criticized by the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).
But President John Mahama in his 2014 State of the Nation address announced that his administration was going to introduce a free progressive SHS education.
His announcement received intense criticism while some teacher unions expressed grave concerns that the policy will affect the quality of education.
The government nonetheless is putting measures in place to begin the implementation of the policy in January 2015.
Speaking on the floor of Parliament on Monday, Mr. Ablakwa said: “We are implementing progressive free SHS which will begin with some 36,500 day students at a cost of Ghc42.7 million.”
The Minister further revealed that “as many as 500,000 school uniforms will be procured for students at the basic level” under the programme.
He announced government’s plan of procuring over 15 million textbooks from local printers for schools nationwide, saying “it is gratifying to note that in 2015, as many as 15 million exercise books will be procured and distributed to 3685 district schools, and what is even more refreshing is that these exercise books and textbooks will be printed locally in line with the President’s transformational agenda.”
“In the 2015 budget, printers have been given a special waiver on imported production materials and so all of these textbooks and exercise books will be printed locally. This will create jobs and this will be a major boost for the economy,” he added.
