Deputy Minister of Education Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum has reiterated that parents and guardians will not be levied in an era of the implementation of the free senior high school(SHS) policy, insisting that suggestions by the Conference of Heads of Assisted Senior High Schools (CHASS) that the the Free SHS policy be reviewed so that parent-teacher associations(PTAs) can be levied for the smooth running of the schools and the continuation of projects started by PTAs are not tenable.
On Thursday, October 29, 2020, CHASS appealed to Government to review the Free SHS which began in the 2017/2018 academic year so that projects and programmes initiated by PTAs with the levies they paid could be continued and completed.
The heads of the senior high schools explained that since the free SHS began, many programmes and projects that were being funded by PTAs have stalled due to the cancellation of the payment of the levies.
But Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum has rejected the suggestion for a resumption of the payment of such levies.
“To say that the Government should somehow allow you [CHASS] to levy your own fees against parents in an era of free senior high school is what I don’t understand. I really don’t understand the point in saying that senior high school is free, the government has absorbed fees, the government is even paying development levies, which is even supposed to be used for school construction and other infrastructure development that the school wants to undertake and yet we are still asking the government to allow us to levy the students, no!” He stressed.
However, Dr Adutwum noted that parents and guardians who are willing to help schools develop can contribute to the schools.
“That [paying levies] is not part of what free senior high school should be about. On the other hand, if you have a group of parents, or parents of any school, who are saying that, can we support our school? Yes of course! They can support their school. They can voluntarily donate to support their school in the same way that old students do.
But we cannot allow introduction of fees through the back door. And then the results of that will be that students who cannot pay those fees will not be allowed to attend school. That will defeat the purpose of free senior high school, which has alleviated the suffering of the poor in this country. And that is not what the government of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and free senior high school should be about,” he explained.
The free SHS policy is a flagship policy of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government. Even though it has been criticised for not targeting only the poor, Government has remained resolute that no parent will pay fees whether or not their economic situation permits them.
