Mr Peter Nortsu-Kotoe, the Ranking Member on Parliament's Education Committee, has expressed criticism towards the government's proposal to introduce a bill on Free Senior High School (SHS), calling it unnecessary.

Mr Nortsu-Kotoe questioned the rationale behind the need for a law to regulate or entrench the Free SHS program, noting the absence of an official policy document on free SHS despite requests made to both previous and current education ministers over the past several years.

In contrast, Majority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin argued that enacting a Free SHS Act would elevate the policy from a mere aspiration to a justifiable right, enabling citizens to seek legal redress if the policy is not implemented.

However, in an interview with JoyNews on June 11, Mr Nortsu-Kotoe cited the constitution's provision, Act 25 (1b), which mandates that secondary education, including technical and vocational training, should be progressively made free—a process that commenced in 2015.

He suggested that the current government's implementation of the Free SHS policy aligns with public expectations, implying that additional legal protections are unnecessary.

"There is no need for any law to regulate or entrench the Free SHS programme. As a committee on education, we have asked the previous minister and the current one that we want to see a Free Senior High School policy or document and for seven to eight years now we have not been able to provide the committee with the policy document. If you don’t even have a policy on what basis are you going to pass the law?" Nortsu-Kotoe questioned.

He further explained, "In any case, the constitution has a provision, Act 25 (1b), that secondary education in all forms including technical and vocational should be progressively made free and that is what we started in 2015.

"So, for this government to have come to office and implemented it as they wanted, I don’t think any Ghanaian has a problem with that. For me, enacting a law to protect it or whatever is neither here nor there."