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Ghana will pay for implementing 'Free SHS' in future - Former UG Vice Chancellor

Professor Ivan Addae-Mensah, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana has called for a review of the 'Free SHS' policy implemented by the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo administration.

Prof Addae Mensah

He said the current system of government paying for every student will come back to harm the country in the future.

Speaking on Sunrise FM in Accra, Prof.Addae said parents who can afford should be allowed to pay.

Prof Addae Mensah said: “I made it very clear that things were not like what they were 50 or 60 years ago when most children could not afford the fee for school.

“Now we have quite a lot of people who can afford to pay fees at the senior high level…Ideally, I don’t think that it is too late to revisit the issue…”

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But he admitted that “it has now become a political thing and we’re in an election. If the president says that we’re going to revisit the issue, the opposition parties or the minority parties are going to take it up…and it will be a political disaster”.

“On the hand, if he doesn’t go back to it, we may have a price to pay in future economically. And now these children who are now being produced en masse will soon be going to the universities, where are they going to be put, we haven’t even started planning that aspect of it and how much it’s going to cost…,” he added.

The Free SHS is the flagship programme of the Akufo-Addo administration which is intended to give all Ghanaian children access to secondary education irrespective of their financial statistics in the society.

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