Free SHS: Ghana will pay a price in future – Addae Mensah

A former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Ivan Addae Mensah, has warned that government will need to revisit the implementation of the Free Senior High School Programme.

He explained that although the government is likely to lose political points if it decides to have a second look at the programme because the opposition will make political capital out of it, there is the need to revisit the programme to make those who can afford to pay.

Otherwise, he told Alfred Ocansey on Sunrise on 3FM 92.7, the country will pay an economic price in future.

The Free SHS is the flagship programme of the Akufo-Addo administration which is intended to give all Ghanaian children access to secondary education irrespective of their financial statistics in the society.

Prof Addae Mensah said: “I made it very clear that things were not like what they were 50 or 60 years ago when most children could not afford the fee for school.

“Now we have quite a lot of people who can afford to pay fees at the senior high level…Ideally, I don’t think that it is too late to revisit the issue…”

But he admitted that “it has now become a political thing and we’re in an election. If the president says that we’re going to revisit the issue, the opposition parties or the minority parties are going to take it up…and it will be a political disaster”.

“On the hand, if he doesn’t go back to it, we may have a price to pay in future economically. And now these children who are now being produced en masse will soon be going to the universities, where are they going to be put, we haven’t even started planning that aspect of it and how much it’s going to cost…,” he added.