Debate on Free SHS must stop; all it needs now is improvement – Akufo-Addo

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said that the Free SHS policy in its current state has answered its critics.

He is of the view that all the policy needs now is not a debate on whether it can be implemented or not, but rather how it can be improved.

The President made this known when he presented the State of the Nation Address on Tuesday, February 27.

He said “Mr Speaker, I believe the success of the Free SHS has answered its critics, and the arguments about it should cease, and we should simply concentrate on finding ways to improve it.

"I am particularly glad that the fears about lowering of standards have been allayed. Refreshingly, we witnessed, through the 2023 batch of Free SHS students, the best WASSCE results in a decade," he stated.

The president noted that the policy has been instrumental in providing people who hitherto would not have had secondary education, the opportunity.

“Mr Speaker, right from the start of this Government coming into office, we have sought to place the maximum effort on the education and training of the youth as the base for building the prosperous nation we seek. A foreign statesman once posed the question: “Why am I the first member of my family in a thousand generations to have gone to the university?”

"In the past seven years, I have met many people, young and old, across this country, who have told me about the first person in their families and in their communities to have gone to Senior High School. They might well ask the question, why are they the first boy or girl in their family to have gone to Senior High school.

"The answer is not far-fetched. Not being able to go to secondary school for lack of money was so widespread and an accepted phenomenon that it led to some people thinking Senior High School was not meant for them or their children or for people from their village, and, therefore, a child in the family finishing Junior High School and moving on to Senior High School was simply not factored in their expectations.”

He added ” Mr Speaker, Free SHS might be labelled by its detractors as a mere political slogan that must be demonised, but it is, in fact, a transformative programme that has broken myths and liberated minds. It is humbling on the one hand and frightening on the other, to think of the sheer number of talents that Free SHS has unearthed that would otherwise have ended their formal education at BECE," he added.