The Member of Parliament (MP) for Kwesimintsim and Vice Chairman for the Education Committee in Parliament, Hon. Dr. Prince Hamid Armah has said that the Free Senior High School policy has succeeded on bridging the equity gap by expanding access to SHS despite its challenges.
In an interview with Accra-based radio, Citi fm, Dr. Armah stated that in accordance to the sustainable development goal 4, the free SHS policy have been moulded to address inequitability reasons being that knowledge acquired is not enough to function in the present society.
“Do you remember that previously people with Junior High School qualifications were recruited into security services, at that time knowledge acquired were sufficient,” he said.
According to him, the policy is primarily focused on dealing with the policy imperative of requiring specific grades and cost element to go to SHS, which has successfully been eradicated.
“Free SHS has expanded the entry requirement of a minimum of aggregate 36 to 53….so that is the most expansive opportunity for secondary education across the world.
“people who have access still have financial problems to be able to enter secondary education… if you look at the private and public systems at the basic school level, 75 percent of our basic school system are public school system or government owned and 25 percent are from the private schools,” Dr. Armah stated.
He further explained that the expansive access will give students who are from the public schools and relatively from poor homes equal opportunity to go to SHS.
He also debunked the assertion that the government has not provided quality indicators to enable teaching and learning in schools.
“Government is committed to provide instructional resources…core text books have been provided, they have reported it to us…as it is now, we have provided supplementary reading materials, we’ve provided materials for technical education these are all part of quality indicators,” he added.
He admitted that the policy is facing some challenges that has stifled the purveyors of the policy from fulfilling its obligation.
“The issue is funding…. the government has presented a budget to support free SHS but we know that in the last couple of years there’s been issues with liquidity…we have revenue and expenditure issues.”
However, he said “the current economic situation has impact on free SHS and we need to discuss it in that context… you don’t say we are owing district assemblies so we should scrap off district assemblies common fund or getfund has some debt or arears not released so we should scrap it off.”
Dr. Armah therefore, noted that the free SHS programme is one of the best social interventions made by the government however, the cardinal problem is the late disbursement of funds by the Ministry of Finance.
“The appeal will go to the Ministry of Finance to ensure monies are released on time…the Education Minister and Ghana Education Service have appeared before the Parliament Select Committee on Education and have consistently raised concerns of the late disbursement of funds.”
He therefore appealed to the Ministry of Finance to release funds on time since it is the government’s priority programme.
