I am glad that following the loss of the governing New Patriotic Party in the 2024 general elections, one of the challenges of the Free Senior High School Policy has come to light - even before the President-Elect, H.E. John Dramani Mahama, officially assumes office on January 8, 2025. This issue is the financing of the Free SHS Policy.

Financing the policy has always been a challenge, but the government carefully tried to cover it up just to save face over the past eight years. It is therefore not surprising that the West African Examination Council (WAEC) issued a statement on December 10, 2025, explaining to the general public the reason for the delay in releasing the 2024 WASSCE results. This is obviously an impediment to the admission processes of public universities like KNUST, University of Ghana, University of Development Studies, etc., which largely depend on the results for the admission of first-year students for their academic year.

In a letter dated December 9, 2024, and signed by the Head of Public Affairs, John K. Kapi, the WAEC attributed the delay in releasing the 2024 WASSCE results to the indebtedness of the Ministry of Education to the WAEC.

The said outstanding balance of GH¢118,000,000 is to be paid to ensure the smooth running of the post-WASSCE activities before results can be released. This indebtedness has been perennial, and I am glad the WAEC has been able to make a bold statement for Ghanaians to know exactly what has been going on.

There are other aspects of the financial challenges; it is on record that several students and teachers across the country have complained about inadequate food supplies to schools, lack of funds to cater for the administration of schools (for example, payment of utilities), lack of logistics to conduct internal examinations and many more.

Financial challenges are just one of the several challenges the Free SHS has faced, and there are several others that could be discussed comprehensively. The Free SHS Policy obviously has some significant positive sides, and I bless Nana Akufo-Addo for whatever good intention he and his government had for the country in investing so much into this policy to make it a reality.

Regardless, having been a teacher at the Senior High School for more than a decade until my resignation in 2022, and having first-hand experience of how the policy was being run in schools across Ghana, from an honest and objective angle, I can say the Free SHS Policy in its current mode and system has reduced the quality of education, affected discipline in our schools, reduced contact hours in schools, bred grounds for wholesale examination malpractices, and hence ‘miseducated’ a larger number of the students rather than educating them.

I am therefore not addressing this issue based on speculations but on credible facts and objective reasoning.

One important issue to address is the quality of food that students are served in the boarding houses. Due to a lack of adequate funding, the government is not able to provide balanced and good food to schools. There were many instances at my school where some food items that were supplied were substandard and even at times rotten, which ought not to be served to students, but matrons had no choice but to use them to prepare the food.

For a long period of time, before I resigned, breakfast was served without sugar—students had to bring their own sugar to the dining hall every morning for breakfast. Eggs, fish, meat, and milk that in the past had been used by schools to supplement protein and other nutrient needs were largely not provided as they ought to be because the government could not supply them. It is apparent that the boarding fees (feeding fees) aspect of the policy is a huge problem for the government, and I think no magician can solve this problem by any other means unless by dealing with it head-on, regardless of the political implications it may bring, to make the policy sustainable.

Additionally, Free SHS is the reason why there is a very strict and impractical procedure schools must adhere to before a student is repeated, which was not the case in the past. The government wants to avoid the situation where schools keep populating just because non-performing students are not promoted to the next grade so that the amount spent on the policy is kept from exceeding a certain range. This mass promotion of students regardless of their academic performance has drastically reduced the quality of education over the years.

Another critique is that because the government wanted to create the picture that Free SHS has created the environment to give students peace of mind to study and also created a better conducive atmosphere for teaching and learning than the pre-SHS era, they (the government) try to admonish the heads of schools to make sure their students pass the WASSCE Exams by whatever means in order to deceive the public that the policy has improved the performance of students. This has caused widespread examination malpractices during WASSCE examinations, which would eventually breed a habit of corruption among these young ones.

However, I do not intend by this write-up to discuss comprehensively the flaws and challenges the Free SHS Policy is faced with. A lot more than the few challenges that I have discussed above are obvious to every reasonable Ghanaian. Hence, in this article, I seek to suggest solutions the government could employ to redirect the path of the Free SHS to make it result-oriented, effective, efficient, and able to target those who are actually in need of the freebies it gives in order to reduce the economic burden it has on the nation for the policy to be sustained.

The basic issue a reasonable person would resolve is whether the cost of education of citizens of all social classes ought to be catered for by the government. Which social group should the government prioritize or have in mind in restructuring the policy? In answering this question, wisdom from a scripture in the Bible could be looked at: Matthew 25:35-46, which reads, “For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”

We could figure out that the scripture is touching on providing or meeting the needs of a person who is in need rather than a person who has resources in abundance.

So the question I always ask myself is: “What would make a person want to pay a student’s fees for him or her?” or “Why would one decide to give free food to someone?” The answer, I guess, is simple: food ought to be offered to or given to a person who is in need of it, and not to persons who have an abundance of food in their homes. Likewise, the fees of persons and students who are in need are the ones that ought to be catered for and not those of students from wealthy and affluent homes.

The review could be based on these three pillars:

1. Pay Fees for All Day Students Nationwide:

One may ask how the government would be able to distinguish between those in need and those who are not. I have experienced times in the past when parents had difficulty paying admission fees for their wards, even when they just wanted to enroll them as day students in schools. It is apparent that a parent in such a situation would be very grateful if a helper pays the admission fees for their ward to attend a day school in their neighbourhood at no cost.

This is why I see the intention of the previous 2012-2016 John Mahama Government to build over a hundred-day schools across the country as apt. These schools were strategically placed in communities lacking schools and populated with many people in need so that if a parent found it difficult to pay the fees of their wards, these schools were available for these students to be enrolled.

I am glad this previous government actually started to put this intention in motion, and in 2015, all first-year students who were admitted as day students were given free tuition. I think if the current 2016-2024 Akufo-Addo-led government had taken that path, we would not have had all these challenges the Free SHS faces, and it would have been sustainable without funding challenges.

Hence, I am of the opinion that the 2024-2028 John Mahama-led government should review the Free SHS Policy by paying for the fees of all-day students, which may include first-year admission fees, supply of some books and stationery in the first year, supply of uniforms, payment of tuition fees for the three years, and payment of WASSCE registration fees.

Literally, all that I am saying is that once a parent decides to enroll his or her ward in a school as a day student, the government should pay for the total cost of education for these day students until they complete school. Any other levy in the form of Parents Association dues should be made optional for all students, especially day students so that a parent in need would be totally relieved of any burden.

The government, being relieved of the burden of paying for the boarding and feeding fees of these students, who but for this excellent idea would enroll as boarders in schools, would be able to save billions of cedis and invest in infrastructure and other important structures in schools to improve the quality of education without burdening or relying so much on parents to build infrastructure for schools.

1. Cost of Boarding Fees (Feeding Fees) to Be Paid by Parents:

A significant portion of the budget allocated to the Free SHS Policy every year is used to settle the boarding fees of students in boarding houses across various schools. These include feeding fees, water bills, electricity costs, and other administrative charges due to the presence of thousands of students hosted at one location.

I have always maintained that the Progressively Free SHS Policy, started by the 2012-2016 Mahama-led administration, which targeted paying fees for all-day students, was the best for the country. This model could be developed further, and in reviewing the current mode of the Free SHS Policy, the admission of all students, whether of day status or boarding status, into senior high schools could be paid by the government. This may include uniforms, essential resources like books, and some stationery provided by the government so that nobody is left out.

However, to solve the main problem of funding, the government could reduce the amount of money it spends on the policy by making parents who wish their wards to go to the boarding house pay the feeding fees of their wards themselves to make it sustainable.

It is apparent that this would address the economic turmoil caused by the burden of paying for the boarding fees of all boarding students. Since the implementation of the Free SHS Policy, the practice has been that, in maintaining fiscal discipline, the government surcharges citizens with taxes in various ways to fund the policy. So, at the end of the day, the government robs citizens of their hard-earned money and uses it to pay the fees for their own wards.

How free is this? It obviously is not. The Free SHS Policy is merely in name; it is a platform to collect money from parents and pay the fees of their wards for them. Because taxes are sometimes not equitable, it feels like ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul.’

To reinforce this suggestion, I am also aware of scenarios where students who would have ordinarily enrolled as day students if their parents were to pay the fees themselves enroll in boarding schools just because of what the policy offers boarding students. Because of the free facilities offered to boarders in senior high schools, parents force their way by whatever means to get their wards into the boarding house.

A number of these students sometimes live as close as within 100 to 500 meters of their preferred schools, and if these parents were to pay the boarding fees on their own, they would not have enrolled their wards in the boarding house but would have opted for day status for their wards to reduce the cost of education.

This is how unpatriotic and unjust some citizens have been—once the government is the one paying, they don’t apply wisdom in how they burden the government with these costs. This irrational advantage people take of the policy puts a lot of pressure on the government, and funding becomes very difficult because boarding fees are the most significant contributing factor to the financial challenges the Free SHS Policy faces.

1. Special Boarding Scholarships for Academically Excellent Students:

It is important to note that the systemic and consistent way in which students from diverse backgrounds are assembled at one location for the purpose of education helps consolidate the peace and harmony we enjoy as a nation. The multicultural and socio-religious diversity that boarding schools offer students helps the youth appreciate people from different backgrounds and beliefs. There is no dispute that this has been one of the reasons why the nation has enjoyed peace and distinguished itself among the nations in the African sub-region.

Hence, I suggest that a certain level of allowance should be provided for a handful of students from every district—not need-based, but by academic merit—to be given special scholarships to enroll as boarders in some selected Grade A schools outside of their district to experience the social diversity mentioned above. In implementing this, about one hundred (100) students who highly performed in the BECE assessment exams from each district could be given special government scholarships to enroll in schools of their choice outside their jurisdiction, once their raw score qualifies them for the school, to enroll as boarders in order to deepen the harmonious relations we enjoy as a nation.

In conclusion, the government could address the challenges of the Free SHS Policy by making parents who wish to enroll their wards in boarding schools pay for the boarding fees (especially feeding fees) themselves. Additionally, all who want to enroll as day students in any school across the country should be able to do so once they qualify per their raw score in the BECE assessment, without paying a penny.

To promote socio-religious and ethnic harmony among citizens of Ghana, special scholarships could also be given to about one hundred students from each district to experience schooling outside their jurisdiction. This could be done strictly by academic merit (i.e., the first one hundred best-performing students from each district).

By relieving the government of the burden of paying for the boarding and feeding fees of these students, who would otherwise enroll as boarders in schools, billions of cedis could be saved and invested in infrastructure and other important structures in schools to improve the quality of education without burdening or relying so much on parents to build infrastructure for schools. These same people we classify as being in need are the ones we want to protect.

Also, to protect the interests of parents who are in need, there ought to be strict measures in place to prevent these parents from being surcharged with any other levy. Thus, any other levy in the form of ‘Parents Association’ dues should be made optional for all students, especially day students, so that a parent in need would be totally relieved of any burden.

By these measures, the Free SHS Policy would be able to serve the purpose of providing educational support to students who are really in need without burdening the government with so much financial cost, making it sustainable.

We are all involved in building our nation.

May God bless our nation, Ghana, and make it great and strong.

Watch as Jean Mensa addresses issues with 9 constituencies whose results are yet to be declared