The Member of Parliament for Builsa South wants the immediate review of government's flagship Free Senior High School (SHS) programme owing to the detrimental effects on Ghana's human resources.

According to Dr Clement Abass Apaak, the policy has increased the enrolment of students in second cycle institutions, however, it was degraded the value students that churn out every year into the tertiary institutions.

Speaking on JoyNews on Saturday, he stated some stakeholders in academia are unenthused about the performance of the crop of students they tutor.

“The Free Senior High School has led to an increase in enrollment but with poor learning outcomes, I think that is very significant.

“You can call a few of my colleagues who are at the universities and lecturers and ask them, about the quality of students, who are coming through these days. They will tell you that the quality is unsatisfactory."

He noted that these dissatisfied lecturers are proposing an entrance examination as a result.

Dr Apaak is of the reason that the component of poor learning outcomes justifies the call for review by former President John Mahama and the likes of Prof Ayettey, Prof Addae-Mensah, Kofi Asare of Education Watch, and Dr Partey of the Institute of Educational Studies

"Are we getting value for money and the answer is no,” he stressed.

The Free SHS programme is amongst the sixteen projects the government is expected to review as part of its conditionalities to obtain the second tranche of money from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

On the back of this, Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah on May 24, 2023, revealed that the government already had plans to review the programme.

The government said it spent some GH¢5.3 billion on Free SHS in 2021. This was disclosed by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta in the 2022 Mid-Year Budget Review presented before parliament Monday, 25 July 2022.

The amount he noted was to enable some 1.2 million children access senior high education.

Source: The Independent Ghana