Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, says the Akufo-Addo government will never cancel the Free Senior High School policy which has benefitted a lot of Ghanaian children.
According to him, the Free SHS has promoted access to secondary education, and its enrollment increased from less than 900,000 students in the 2016/17 academic year, to more than 1.2 million in 2020/21.
Due to that the government is doing its best to fix the economy and will continue to contribute to the largest portion of education expenditure.
The Vice President made this known in a speech read on his behalf by the Senior Advisor to the President, Yaw Osafo Maafo, at the 2022 edition of the Annual National Education Week held in Accra.
The event which brought most gurus in the Educational Sector was held under the theme: “Re-Assessing Educational Policies for Effective Service Delivery and National Transformation.”
Dr. Bawumia in his speech noted that this administration spent on average, between 4.5% – 4.6% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and between 17.6% – 24% of its national budget on education from 2019 to 2021.
He noted that “The share of government expenditure in education increased marginally from 73.4% in 2019 to 74.0% in 2020”, adding that the debate should not be whether our public expenditure was too high or too low, but instead whether or not these programs contributed to the welfare of Ghanaians and are essential for our national transformation.
Deputy Education Minister, John Fordjor, in a brief remark, stated that his outfit had the sole responsibility of contributing to the desired national transformation by recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of the current system.
BY Daniel Bampoe