Free SHS: Some parents must pay to prevent collapse – UG lecturer

A Senior Lecturer at the Department of Economics at the University of Ghana Dr. Ebo Turkson has appealed to President Akufo-Addo to review the Free SHS policy so that well-to-do parents can pay for their children.

This, he said, will save the policy from the high cost which threatens to collapse it in future.

“ In the second term of Akufo-Addo, we need to look at the financing of free SHS. I can bet that most parents can pay GHC1,200 as fees so that the most vulnerable will benefit. The free SHS is a good policy and I think if some parents are allowed to pay fees, the policy will not collapse,” he told Francis Abban on the Morning Starr Wednesday while commenting on the President’s State of the Nation Address.

Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta in 2018 raised concerns over the cost of the policy.

“The issue of free education, I don’t think its something that any of us can compromise on… It may be that there have to be changes in the way which we are administering it,” Mr Ofori-Atta said Monday in an interview on Citi TV.

“I can’t take my child to Achimota or Odorgonnor and then leave him or her and drive away and Ken Ofori-Atta not pay anything while I can pay for 10 people. You need to be able to get the data to then be discriminatory in how and who pays and who doesn’t pay”.

The Free Secondary High School (Free SHS) education policy was a government initiative introduced in the 2017. The policy’s origination began as part of the President’s presidential campaign during 2012 campaign.