The President of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), Yaw Acheampong Boafo, has called on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to review the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy to pave way for rich parents to pay school fees for their wards.
Speaking at the 2024/2025 Annual General Conference of the Ghana Bar Association in Kumasi today, September 9, 2024 Mr Boafo explained that the move will free up more resources for government use.
He emphasized the need for government to have a critical look at improve basic education predominantly removing schools under trees and also focus on underprivileged students rather wholesale free secondary education.
He also listed some of the interventions that worth government consideration if part of the money spent on free SHS is reserved by allowing rich parents to pay SHS fees.
“Students from comfortable backgrounds who attended expensive basic schools must pay fees at the senior high school level so that resources are free to fully cater for the poor. Mr. President, we must invest more in ‘syto’ (public schools) education, eliminate schools under trees, and provide sanitary pads for poor young girls first before spending so much on secondary education” he said.
According to him “the Free SHS programme must be means-tested using the data compiled by the National Identification Authority so that rich parents do not suddenly transform to become peasant farmers, as in the days of old when we had the COCOBOD scholarship”.
He again remarked that “as one comes before two, so basic education comes before secondary education. There is also this recent revelation about the school feeding programme from the Auditor General, which should serve as a source of concern for us and call for review and improvements in the operations of the programme, the main beneficiaries of which are people from poor backgrounds.”
