Free SHS Not Compromised Education Quality
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House
The Deputy Minister-designate for Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour has dismissed assertions that the quality of secondary education in the country has been compromised by the introduction of the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy.
According to him, annual performance reports by the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) and other comparative studies point to a contrary situation, adding that these reports indicate that education outcomes have been improving for the past five years.
Members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) have suggested that the Free SHS policy had compromised quality of education by prioritizing quantity and attributed this to the double-track system, a temporary stop-gap measure to address infrastructural challenges brought by the programme.
However, Rev. Fordjour, who is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Assin South, insists the quality of secondary education has rather improved contrary to claims, and pointed to the 2020 WAEC report, which he said, announced that out of 465 students in West Africa who scored A1 in all eight subjects, 88 per cent of them (representing 411 students) were Ghana Free SHS graduates.
“For the first time, over 50 per cent of our students who sat for WAEC exams passed all core subjects and all the figures are there for the various eyes to do a comparison,” he told the Appointment Committee of Parliament during his vetting on Monday.
“It is a very huge gain for the country. It is a narrative that the country must be so proud of and for which I do not think that quality has been compromised,” he argued.
On TVET, the deputy minister nominee said technical and vocational education formed the critical part of the economic transformation of every nation, and indicated that it was upon this backdrop that President Akufo-Addo “strategically envisioned” that by the end of 2030 the science to humanities ratio would have been improved.
He stated that the President envisaged the current ratio 35:65 of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics to Humanities (STEM) be transformed to 60 for STEM and 40 for humanities.
“We have on record many investments that have been put into TVET transformation. The recent bill that was passed, Pre-Tertiary Education Act, goes to give credence to the priority being set to transform that sector.”
He disclosed that students, under the Free SHS, are enjoying free textbooks – elective textbooks which are kept at the school library and core textbooks that are handed over to students to keep, and said the government needed to be praised for the policy.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House