President Akufo-Addo claims that the Free SHS has not reduced the quality of education.
The Free Senior High School (SHS) Policy's purported impact on the quality of secondary education has been disputed by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
He refuted the charges with data, claiming that the strategy had had a considerable positive impact on performance in the four key disciplines of English, mathematics, science, and social studies.
He pointed out that while just 33% of WASSCE candidates passed mathematics in 2016, that percentage rose to 54.1% in 2021 and that mathematics served as the foundation for many other established and developing areas.
The English Language pass rate increased from 53.8% in 2016 to 54.8% in 2021.
According to him, "Integrated Science improved from 48.5% in 2016 to 65.7% in 2021, while Social Studies made the same progress from 54% to 66%."
The President said that not only had more young people had access to education, but competency rates were also significantly higher.
"How therefore can anyone say that this has not been a good thing? It has made a significant contribution to our nation's future, he remarked.
Interacting with the people at Kasoa during his two-day tour of the Central Region on Friday, President Akufo-Addo said apart from expanding and developing infrastructure, there were also key reforms such as teacher motivation and access to quality textbooks.
“These have been major contributions and in a few year's time we will see that the policy has been an intervention that has really lifted the prospects of the development of our country,” he added.
The President observed that skeptics of the Free SHS had changed their stance from “a bad policy to the fact that it could be implemented in a better way.”
He said he was all for suggestions that would help improve the implementation of the policy because the benefit was for the next generation.
“And if there is anyone with an idea on how the system can be made better, I will not stand in their way.”
Responding to suggestions that the policy should be targeted at the poor, he insisted that he would not condone segregation in the delivery of education.
“If you can afford to pay school fees, you can take your wards to the private school for the fee-paying exercise,” he said.
The United States, which was a developing nation at the start of the 20th century but attained the status of a developed nation through a determined education strategy, was cited by the President as an inspiration.
With 1,765,977 pupils enrolled since 2017, the Free SHS has given the greatest number of young people access to senior high school education in Ghana's history, according to the president.
He said that because of financial limitations, the majority of the beneficiaries would not have been able to attend school.
The system, insisted President Akufo-Addo, was required to find the skills and brilliant minds required for the nation's development.
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