Within two years under the administration of the Akufo-Addo led-government, unemployment rate has seen a significant decline contrary to what the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and other political parties may be projecting, Minister of Employment and Labour Relations has asserted.

Taking his turn to address the media and subsequently Ghanaians on developments in his sector, Ignatius Baffour Awuah disclosed that the introduction of the Free Senior High School Policy by government has contributed immensely to the reduction of the country’s unemployment rate.

He explained that the policy absorbs about 90,000 persons who naturally would have joined the bracket of unemployment per the statistics

“… When we studied the data and analysed it, we realized that one of the major contributors to the decline in unemployment has been the introduction of the free senior high school… the working population starts from age 15. At age 15, a child has just completed junior high school, so all things being equal, all those who otherwise wouldn’t have continued education would have fallen into the unemployment bracket but for the free senior high school they are schooling so you cannot say that they are unemployed...”

The free senior high school policy is a flagship policy under the Akufo-Addo led administration which was enrolled in September 2017.

During his recent tour in the Upper regions, President Akufo-Addo gave the assurance that government will increase the enrollment of students under the policy to enable every student to benefit at all levels of senior high school education across the country.



“From September this year, all students of the three classes of Senior High Schools across Ghana are going to be beneficiaries of the Free Senior High School policy across and it will mean that for the first time in our history over one million; in fact 1.2million plus students will be enrolled in SHS education in Ghana.” President Akufo-Addo announced.