Gov’t Extends Free SHS To Final Year Day Students

Government has extended its flagship free Senior High School programme to cover final-year day students, The programme was implemented to cover first year students when it began in September 2017

The policy primarily only included students who entered secondary school in 2017 and 2018.
A circular by the Ghana Education Service (GES) to all Regional Directors of Education urged the Regional Directors to treat the directive with urgency.

The circular was signed by the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Professor Kwesi Opoku Amankwa

“As part of the Free SHS package, the fees for form one and form two students, both day and boarding, as well as day students in form three have been absorbed by the government,” it said.

The circular stressed that “only boarding students in form three are supposed to pay the approved fees unless the fee item is subsidised by the government.”

“Any fees already paid by students in excess of the approved fees for the first semester of the 2018/2019 academic year should be credited to the students for the second semester,” the circular added.

The Free SHS policy was introduced by the Akufo-Addo administration in September 2017.

The policy had been a key campaign policy of the New Patriotic Party prior to the election of President Akufo-Addo in 2016.

The policy is designed to make secondary education in Ghana absolutely free thus greatly increasing enrollment.

In 2018, owing to the infrastructure conditions brought on by the policy, the government initiated the Double Track System as part of the Free SHS Education Policy.

This new system will run in all the categories A and B senior high schools in the country.

The new programme creates a calendar of two semesters in a year for the SHS 1 class, containing 81 days per each semester and 41 days of vacation for a sandwich class.