The free senior high school (SHS) policy would not, under any circumstances, be changed, according to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
He asserted that many who initially opposed a review are now in favour of it. To the best of his understanding, revising it meant changing the policy, he said.
On the first day of his three-day tour of the area, the President revealed this in an interview with Republic Radio 97.5 Fm, situated in Nkawkaw, in the Kwahu West Municipality of the Eastern Region.
Reviewing the free SHS policy, in Nana’s Akufo-opinion, Addo would refuse a significant number of potential students with low socioeconomic status and jeopardize the program’s quality and accessibility.
He claimed that the free SHS program has significantly improved secondary education and that any attempt to change the program would harm the policy’s accessibility and effectiveness.
The areas of study that had shown a substantial improvement, according to Nana Akufo-Addo, were mathematics, integrated science, English, and social studies.
In addition, he said that the policy has made it easier for many would-be students to get high-quality instruction.
According to Nana Akufo-Addo, changing the policy would imply weakening it.
“The first people who opposed the free SHS policy are the same people calling for a review but on the whole, the policy has improved secondary education and made it possible for students of poor parentage to access the quality and free SHS programme”.
“I cannot accept the idea of reviewing the free SHS programme since that will deny more Ghanaians from accessing the programme”, President Akufo-Addo stated.
He said although the pastors had good intentions about the policy, he was not against what they were calling for but he would like to know specifically the areas of the free SHS policy they (the pastors) would want to be reviewed.
Source: Mybrytnewsroom.com/Joseph Asare
