Ghana sees a leap in girl child enrolments due to free SHS – Dr Adutwum touts

Deputy Education Minister, Dr Yaw Adutwum, has said there has been a leap in the enrolment figures of girls into secondary education due to the implementation of the free Senior High School (SHS) policy.

According to him, in a spate of three years, there has been a 20% increase in girls’ enrolment in Senior High Schools across the country.

“From 48.9% it has moved to 60.8% in three years. That is great progress. You don’t see this in many parts of the world. You don’t accomplish this within that short period of time. So, we are making progress as a nation,” he said.

The Deputy Education Minister was speaking on Wednesday at the Political Parties Debate organised by the University for Development Studies (UDS) in partnership with NORSAAC and Oxfam on Education Policy in Ghana.

“If you look at the gross enrolment ratio of girls in Senior High Schools, in 2015/16 it was 48.9%. 2018/19 it rose to 60.8%. So when you remove the cost barrier, parents are not being forced to choose between a boy and a girl. And therefore, you begin to see that girls get the opportunity to go to school. So free SHS is doing some magic when it comes to girls’ enrolment at the secondary level,” he stressed.

He said some $200 million from the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcome Programme (GALOP) will further help to integrate school dropouts back into the education system.

“Anything that you do, you have to focus on making sure that the children who are on the streets are reintegrated into our schools.

“If you look at what we are doing with the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcome Programme, over $200 million project sponsored by the World Bank, we have a component that focuses on how you get the children on the street, especially girls back in school,” he said

He said the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo administration government has successfully brought the children on the street back to school within three years of taking the reins of government.