Professor Ernest Aryeetey, the Former Vice Chancellor of University of Ghana on Monday called for a targeted approach that would enable parents who are not poor to make substantial financial contributions in non-free Senior High School (SHS).
He said the education system should be possible to categorise schools depending on their endowments and conditions and set eligibility criteria and exempt schools that are not eligible from free status and as well provide scholarships to eligible students in non-free schools.
These according to the Former Vice Chancellor were prudent in sustaining government flagship programme for SHS.
Prof Aryeetey stated in Accra at the Graphic Business/Stanbic Bank meeting on Financing Free Quality Education in Ghana-Sustainable Funding Options”.
He stated that improving the quality of SHS education would cost more money and that the state trying to do it alone would be problematic as it draws resources away from other essential investments required for structural transformation.
He was of the view that private participation including parents would provide an assurance of the sustainability as far as free SHS was concerned.
Prof Aryeetey expressed concern about the poor infrastructural investment for schools in the country, urging government to deal with the phenomenon through public private partnerships.
He stated that the public private partnerships cannot be applied uniformly and that proper criteria would have to be developed to aid selection and monitoring.
He said access to basic and secondary levels of education had improved significantly, adding that increased access had not been matched with corresponding resources.
“To improve upon the country’s educational system, government need to work on teacher supply and motivation especially in the rural areas”, he added.
Prof Opoku Amankwah, the Director General of the Ghana Education Service said the introduction of the free SHS, established in 2017 was to prepare and equip the youth with aptitude for further and life-long education and employable skills for the world of work.
According to him, the rationale was to address inequality and ensures equal opportunities for all students through the removal of cost barriers.
Touching on giving opportunities to parents who can pay for their fees, Prof Amankwah said it all had to deal with honesty of people because most of the people who benefit from scholarships are the rich at the top to the detriment of the poor.
He explained that, the country need to change its attitude and be sincere to each other for government policy to work effectively.
Source: GNA
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This free SHS is good but it should be from primary class 1 to SHS in a sense the apart from feeding fees in the boarding house. If you want your child to be in the boarding house prepare to pay on the feeding fees, and there rest up to the exams fees govt should pay it all. The person who should not be paid the feeding fees should be those on scholarship, like CMB scholarship, Government scholarship and the school scholarship (which is half of the feeding fees) as it was in the past.
you see this prof, you are the same person who said education at tertiary level is not for the poor. you are coming to mess up the senior secondary level with these ideas. look the rich have since taken their kids out leaving the poor to educate their kids in here. do we have rich people in ghana at all?
If we allow the rich to pay, eventually we come back to the same problem of affordability, and the rich will continue to be richer and the poor much poorer. why do we still want to create an elitist society and put the poor at an disadvantage position. Akufo Addo has a great vision and for that God will bless him. In fact both those calling themselves rich and the poor must all patronize the free SHS system, period!!!
Was this not what Mahama had been saying??? Hypocrites
my father has been a cocoa farmer for about forty years and still counting BUT none of his children was able to get Cocoa board scholarship but a friend who has never seen cocoa including his parents was enjoying CMB SCHOLARSHIP. SURELY the elite in ghanaian society feel frighten by FREE SHS