President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has assured that the Free Secondary Education Policy will not be affected by the International Monetary Fund support the government is seeking.
“I am very confident these programmes, especially the Free SHS and Free TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) programme, will emerge from the programme with the fund intact,” he said.
“These programmes are at the heart of this government’s work over these last five years, and we have made it clear to everybody that they are non-negotiable,” President Akufo-Addo stressed.
President Akufo-Addo was speaking on Radio Upper East as part of his tour of the Upper East Region.
While the IMF’s Resident Representative to Ghana, Dr Albert Touna-Mama, has said the Free SHS policy will not be cancelled, he noted that there need to be conversations about how to make the policy more sustainable.
The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has also said a review of the Free Senior High School policy remains a constant possibility.
In its sixth year of implementation, major stakeholders in the education sector and some politicians have called for the review of the free SHS program in order to relieve the government of the financial burden it poses in its current state.