Former president, John Dramani Mahama says it is difficult for the Free Senior High School policy to work in a boarding school system.
According to the former president, evidence from the implementation of the policy in countries across the globe indicates that such a policy works effectively with day school model and not a boarding school system like that of Ghana.
“In most of the countries where Free SHS is working, it is based on the day school module. Free SHS is difficult to work when you have a boarding system like Ghana has,” he stated in an interview on TV XYZ.
Mr. Mahama said this to justify his government’s decision to initiate the building of 200 Community Day Senior High Schools across the country.
The 2020 flagbearer of the NDC explained that the Community Day School projects were intended to accommodate more students and limit the number of students admitted into the boarding system so as to ease congestion in the boarding houses.
“We took the decision to build more day schools so that they can absorb some of the children and give them education and then we would limit those under the boarding system. So we were going to have a combination of boarding and day which would ease the pressure,” he said.
He blamed the challenges confronted in the implementation of the policy on the inability of the government to complete most of the Community Day SHS projects. He claimed the government has abandoned the construction of the projects and resorted to the building of 14 new schools with boarding facilities hence, the infrastructural challenges in the various schools.
For him, there would have been no need for the introduction of the double track system if government had committed to completing the projects.
“They have abandoned the Community Day SHSs and they are going to build 14 new super complex boarding schools to add to the burden of the boarding schools we have already. That is why we are having problems with the Free SHS implementation that they would ask students to go home because there is no food. And they have to introduce the double track system. If we had finished more of the day schools, it would have eased the pressure on the existing SHSs and we probably would not have to introduce the double track system. Our approach was to decentralize SHS education and take it to the doorsteps of the people”.
