FREE SHS

Free SHS policy is a policy of the government of Ghana, starting in September 2017 where every child in Ghana who qualifies for, and is placed in a public Senior High School for his secondary education will have his/her fees absorbed by the government.

The policy's origination began as part of the President's presidential campaign during Ghana's 2016 election period. The policy has three core themes: access, equity and equality.

Free education is in line with Article 25 1b of the 1992 Constitution which states that “Secondary education in its different forms including technical and vocational education, shall be made generally available and accessible to all by every appropriate means, and in particular, by the progressive introduction of free education”.

Free SHS is also in line with Goal 4, Target 1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also states that “by 2030, all boys and girls complete free equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes”.

By free SHS we mean free tuition, admission fee, textbooks, library fees, science center fees, fees for ICT, examination fee, payment of utility fee, boarding and meals.

The rational behind the implementation of the policy now is to reverse the current trend where some students are denied secondary education due to their parents inability to afford secondary school fees. For example, SHS enrolment has almost doubled from 393,995 in 2007/08 to 787,861 in 2015/16 academic year. This notwithstanding, a chunk of this numbers are unable to take their places in secondary schools.

FREE SHS PROMISE IN THE MANIFESTO

On page 31 of the NPP's 2016 manifesto, under education, in point 'e', the NPP promised to "redefine basic education to include Senior High School (SHS), covering vocational, agricultural and technical schools, and make it available for free on a universal basis to all Ghanaians".

FREE SHS IN THE 2017 BUDGET

At page 148 of the 2017 budget, under the heading Free Public Senior High School, it was stated that: 

"Mr. Speaker, as part of our commitment to improve access to education at all levels, Government will implement the comprehensive free public Senior High School (SHS) programme starting with the 2017/2018 academic year. This will include technical and vocational institutes. 

Mr. Speaker, adequate provisions have been made for the funding of this monumental social intervention programme which is set to begin in September, 2017, from the ABFA and other domestic revenue sources.

LAUNCH OF FREE SHS

On Tuesday, 12th September, 2017, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo launched the Free Senior High School policy at the West Africa Senior High School.

President Akufo-Addo, at the launch, noted that he made the Free SHS pledge “because I know that knowledge and talent are not for the rich and privileged alone, and that free education widens the gates of opportunities to every child, especially those whose talents are arrested because of poverty.”

PILLARS OF THE FREE SHS POLICY

The programme is anchored on the below pillars;

1. Removal of cost barriers

Remove Cost Barriers through the absorption of fees approved by GES council

2. Expansion of infrastructure

Expand physical school infrastructure and facilities to accommodate the expected increase in enrolment.

3. Improvement in Quality and Equity

Improve quality through provision of core textbooks and supplementary readers, teacher rationalisation and deployment, etc.

4. Development of Employable Skills

Improve competitiveness of Ghanaian Students to match the best in the World.

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DOUBLE TRACT SYSTEM

The policy of Government is that ‘no qualified child should be left behind’. According to our 2018 projections, there is the need to create 181,993 extra spaces to accommodate the high number of students projected to enrol in our senior high schools in the 2018/19 academic year. The Double-track School Calendar is an innovative intervention that will create the room to accommodate the projected increase in enrolment.

In the 2018 Academic calendar, the double track system was introduced by the government in order to enable various senior high schools to take in more students and ensure that all students have access to a senior high school education. 

Ghana joins countries like USA, Japan China, Australia, Brazil, France and Costa Rica across the world to adopt the system, also known as Year-Round Education (YRE).

The Double Track System is in two sessions, thus The Green Track and The Gold Track. The Green Track represents the first batch of students who would go to school for a semester and are later followed by the Gold Track students who would continue after students of the green track session have vacated on the academic calendar.

The system was introduced to combat the overwhelming number of high school enrollments that were as a result of the publicizing of the policy.

Government had earlier on envisaged that the double track system will run for some 5 to 7 years before adequate infrastructure is put in place to absorb the huge enrollments in Senior High Schools in order to revert into single track schools. However, with government's Senior High School Intervention projects, it is now envisaged that the double track will run for just some years as a result of some 800 projects being undertaken in various double track schools.

The benefits of 5he double track are:

• Contact hours between teacher and student will increase, enabling teachers to have more time to complete the syllabus.
• Schools will use the same infrastructure to enrol more students.
• Teacher vacation periods will increase (from 12 weeks to 16 weeks)
• The double-track school calendar will reduce congestion in schools and this will lead to a reduction in class sizes

FUNDING OF FREE SHS

Government spent GH¢212 million from the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) in the first year of implementing the program. However, the program has now been removed from the list of projects funded with the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA).

It is now funded by the Scholarship Secretariat.

In 2020 alone, government spent over 2.4 billion on Free SHS

He said, so far, government had spent GH¢7.7 billion in implementing the flagship policy since its roll-out, which had benefitted more than 1.2 million students at the secondary education level.

In 2017, an amount of GH¢480 million was spent on the Policy, GH¢1.3 billion in 2018, GH¢1.6 billion in 2019, GH¢2.4 billion in 2020, while GH¢1.9 billion would be spent in 2021.

ENROLLMENT INTO SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS AFTER THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE FREE SHS POLICY

From 2017 to 2020, the Free SHS has benefitted over 1.6 million Ghanaian children.