President John Dramani Mahama has stated that capitation grant has increased school intake especially at the basic level.

Addressing the Ghanaian Community in London Friday evening, President Mahama said, the introduction of the capitation grant by government had increased primary and basic school enrollment by over 97 percent. According to him, education has been one of the priority sectors that government had embarked on.

Government he noted, has shown commitment in ensuring that Ghana is able to achieve the free compulsory universal basic education combined with the Millennium Development Goals which is meant to achieve the goal of ensuring that children of school going age are put to school.

President Mahama explained that, Ghana by the end of 2015 had chalked enough successes through a number of reforms and restructuring of the educational sector with the provision of infrastructure especially at the basic level. ''Education has been one of the priority sectors that we have,'' we have given much attention to.

''And what we realized of the structure of educational system we had is that we had started the free universal basic education that combined with the Millennium Goal that we all signed to as a global community. It meant that we were supposed to achieve universal primary education. It meant that all children of school going age; by age six (6) should have the opportunity to go to school.

And so we had introduced the capitation grants that allowed children to go to primary school up to basic school without paying any fees. Now what had happened is that, it had increased our primary and basic enrollment to the extend that by the time we finished the Millennium Development Goals; that is by the end of 2015, Ghana had achieved in excess of 97 percent enrollment at the primary level.

''The other aspect is that, we were supposed to achieved gender parity; it meant that as many girls of school going should be going to school as the boys were and we had also achieved gender parity almost on one to one.'' President Mahama explained further that, his administration had increased infrastructure allowing more children who had completed Junior High School to enter into Senior High School.

According to him, there was restriction to secondary school as only 567 government secondary schools and some another 100 plus private schools with most being boarding with limitation of students admitted and that is how come, government started the Community Day Senior High Schools to increase access to Secondary education.