We’ve placed 500,000 BECE students in various high schools this year – Education Minister

He said the introduction of the ‘Free SHS’ has made the numbers increase significantly.

Speaking at the 2022 Presidential BECE awards in Accra, Dr. Yaw Adutwum said the free SHS policy has opened many opportunities for children to attain secondary education.

“The Free SHS programme has sent many students to various high schools in the country. When it started in 2017, there were 830,000 students enrolled in high schools across the country.”

“This year alone, we have a record 500,000 students placed in senior high schools across the country, and we are waiting forward for them to enroll. That tells you the progress we have made these past few years.”

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in an older interview lauded the impact of the Free SHS policy in the country.

“The 2022 results are the best of the last 8 years. Surely there can be no longer any controversy about the validity of the free SHS policy and its consequential measures, it is working and working well".

Nana Akufo-Addo said in a Facebook post after addressing the 70th Anniversary Celebration of Opoku Ware Senior High School.

According to President Akufo-Addo, “six (6) years on following the implementation of the Free Senior High School policy, which has guaranteed a minimum of Senior High School education for 1.7 million Ghanaian children, the highest such enrolment in our history, I can state, without equivocation, that I am very proud of the policy and its results thus far.”

Delivering an address at the 70th Anniversary Celebration of Opoku Ware Senior High School, on Saturday, 3rd December 2022, the President noted that the 2022 WASSCE results of the third batch of the “Akufo-Addo graduates” shows 60.39% of students recording A1-C6 in English, as opposed to 51.6% in 2016.”