Whither free senior high school education?

By: Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa
An average of 600,000 students are expected each year in the next four years – 2025 to 2028 – to enter senior high school.
It is these potential beneficiaries and their families who are posing the question: What is the future of FSHS as President Akufo-Addo leaves office in January 2025?
In a country where succeeding governments tend not to continue with policies and projects of their predecessors, and especially drawing from pronouncements of some political leaders as we go into the December 7, 2024 general elections, the question of the future of FSHS becomes relevant.

Free SHS Policy
The policy is anchored on four main pillars: removal of cost barriers through the absorption of approved fees; access and expansion of physical school infrastructure and facilities to accommodate the expected increase in enrolment; improvement in quality and equity through the provision of teaching and learning materials (TLMS), teacher rationalisation and deployment and the use of equity placement system; development of employable skills and improving competitiveness of Ghanaian students to match the best in the world.
Data, as of 2017, truly justified the need for the policy. It identified financial constraints as one of the biggest barriers to SHS enrolment.
Data showed that only 11.5 per cent of students who benefitted from the Northern Scholarship did not take up admissions compared to 35 per cent of learners from the south.
The national trends, however, showed that the percentage of placed but not enrolled dropped from average of 26.5 per cent to 14.7 per cent in 2017, the first year of the implementation of the Free SHS.
The introduction of double-track calendar and the subsequent expansion of infrastructure, equipping science laboratories and retooling foundries for TVETs afforded the opportunity to enrol averagely 100,000 more students each year since 2018.
Government maintained that increasing access while improving quality is possible especially with interventions including the provision of core subject textbooks for all students; increased contact hours for teaching and learning; training in content mastery for core subject teachers – training materials have been digitised and distributed to schools post COVID-19; academic intervention grants sent to schools to support supplemental instruction and remedial packages delivered to all students.
Additionally, nearly 1, 000 vehicles – buses, pickups and motorbikes were supplied to schools, all regional and district directors of education, Schools Improvement and Support Officers (SISOs), heads of SHS/TVET and other agencies of the Ministry of Education, to facilitate monitoring and supervision of teaching and learning in all schools across the country.

Financing
The FSHS is fully sponsored and funded by the government. From 2017 up to date, the NPP government has spent GH¢ 9.9 billion on the FSHS.
Under the Free SHS package, government absorbs all fees approved by the GES Council for all public secondary schools, other than parent-teacher association (PTA) dues.
This is in addition to government’s obligation of catering for the emoluments of the over 350,000 thousand staff of GES and TVET Service (TVETS) and the provision of infrastructure for schools across the country.
These absorbed fees include: One-time fee items for first year students – school uniforms, school cloth, house dress and stationery for students, etc.; All recurrent fee items – admissions fees, vehicle maintenance, building maintenance, and examinations fees etc., and feeding fees – three meals for boarders and one hot meal for all day students.

Improvement in learning outcomes
The free senior high school (SHS) with all its hiccups has been highly successful. Beyond providing access to nearly 500,000 students each year since 2017, the positive outcomes have also reflected in the academic performance of the first four cohorts of the free SHS who completed between 2020 and 2023.
A nine-year period analyses showed that the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results of the free SHS 2020 to 2023 cohorts, scored above 50 per cent in all four core subject areas, making their prospects for enrolment into tertiary institutions higher than in previous years, defeating arguments that free SHS would lower standards.
Indeed, Ghana had 411 of the 8A1s out of the overall 465 8A1s recorded in the WASSCE 2020. Further, Ghana won all top three positions of the 2020 and 2023, won second and third positions in 2021, and in 2022, won the first and second positions of the West African Examinations Council’s International Excellence Awards.
Other gains
The free SHS has created jobs for over 50,000 teaching and nonteaching staff employed into the senior high schools as subject teachers, administrative staff, kitchen staff, library staff, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) staff, drivers and security staff since 2017.
Jobs have also been created for building contractors, artisans, food vendors, publishers, printers and booksellers, suppliers of school uniforms, school cloth, PE kits and a host of other businesses.
The implementation of the free SHS/TVET policy has not been without challenges. A number of implementation challenges continue to rear their heads for which critiques including academics, civil society organisations (CSOs), prominent individuals – chiefs, and of course, politicians lash at the policy.
The challenges include: food and logistics, financing of the policy, infrastructure deficits, complaints about restricted involvement of parents and guardians, SHS placement and admission challenges, and non-participation of private schools in the FSHS.
Some harp on these challenges to discredit the policy.

Future of free SHS policy
Nearly eight years of its implementation, the free SHS/TVET policy seems to be a determining factor in the December 7, 2024 general elections in the country especially considering the financial relief that it offers to many low-income families.
The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) who have consistently expressed their misgivings about the free SHS are promising to make the policy better by reviewing it within 100 days in office in 2025.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP), the originators of the free SHS policy on the other hand, sees the challenges as peripheral issues, which tend to confront the implementation of such large-scale social intervention policies.
The party contends that having implemented the policy for nearly eight years, they are in a much better position to resolve the challenges and make the policy better and enviable.
We have a decision to make! “Should we go to Elmina or to Cape Coast?” Well, our dilemma is best answered by considering the fate of the nearly four million students who are expected to enter senior high school 2025 to 2028.

The writer is a retired professor and former Director-General of Ghana Education Service. kopokuamankwa@gmail.com