Free SHS programme has not reduced quality of high school education - Ntim Fordjour

• The Deputy Minister-Designate for Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, has rejected claims that the government’s Free SHS policy has affected the quality of senior high education

• He also said WASSCE 2020 results deserve credit and not otherwise

• Free SHS education policy in Ghana was introduced in 2017 September

The Deputy Minister-Designate for Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, has dismissed assertions that the Free SHS policy has downgraded the quality of education at the secondary school level in Ghana.

He described such claims as unfounded and therefore urged that they should be disregarded completely.

The government has been criticized for introducing the double-track system as a temporary measure to address infrastructural challenges brought on by the implementation of the free SHS programme.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang, former Education Minister has also discredited the 2020 WASSCE results, suggesting that there was mass exam cheating.

Appearing before the Appointments Committee of Parliament on Monday, June 7, 2021, Mr. Fordjour said the policy has improved the country’s educational sector.

“I don’t agree that quality has been substituted for quantity with the Free SHS policy because considering all the reports available, (the Annual Performance Report of the educational sector and WAEC 2020), it indicates that the education outcomes have been improving for the past five years steadily, and quality hasn’t been compromised.”

The Assin South legislator said the government ought to be commended rather than demonized for the initiative.

“Recently, when the 2020 WAEC report was announced, out of the 465 students in West Africa that scored an A in all eight subjects, 411 (88%) of them were Ghanaian Free SHS graduates; and for the first time, 50% of students that sat for the WASSCE all passed for the core subjects. Such claims are not true and should be disregarded.”