Free SHS is a game-changer in the Ghanaian education system

The Department of Education says the Free High Schools (FSHS) policy is a game-changer in the country’s education system.

He said the introduction of the policy in 2017 had helped thousands of students who would have stayed home because they could not meet the 30-year-old threshold, the required SHS entrance grade set by the Ghana Education Service (GES).

This was in a statement signed by Mr. Felix Baidoo, the Press Secretary to the Minister of Education, to debunk some claims by Dr. Sampson Obed Appiah, Senior Lecturer at the University of Ghana, who described the system double-tracked as the “most unfortunate politician in the history of the country’s education system.

He added that the lecturer said that the FSHS policy has resulted in reduced contact hours, reduced quality of education and increased financial burden on parents, among others.

In response, the ministry said the FSHS policy was introduced to improve access to SHS for all Ghanaian students, adding that “due to the opportunity offered, the number of Ghanaian students wishing to acquire an education has increased. increases”.

He said the government had introduced the Double Track system ‘as an advanced measure, to ensure that all students who had passed the Basic Education and Certificate exams had access to quality education.

The statement said the government has announced countless times that the dual track system was an advanced approach that would be faced as soon as most of the school’s ongoing infrastructure projects were completed to absorb many students in the schools across the country.

“The president assured that it would be removed within 5 to 7 years,” he said.

Addressing the benefits of the FSHS, the statement said the introduction of the policy has resulted in an increase in student enrollment, adding that an additional 400,000 students have been admitted to graduate institutions across the country due to the Politics.

He said the infrastructural challenges in schools have been with the nation for a long time and it was not the introduction of the FSHS nor the tracking system that caused the infrastructural challenge as Dr Appiah speculated.

He further pointed out that the Ministry of Education has built more than 962 facilities including dormitories, assembly halls, canteens and classrooms across the country since the introduction of the policy to help create an environment conducive to effective teaching and learning.

The ministry said that until the introduction of the FSHS program, SHS had a total of 1,080 teaching hours per year, but the introduction of the tracking system led to a revision of six teaching hours. per day at seven hours, making a cumulative total of 1134 hours for each academic year.

He said the WASSCE 2020 results showed a huge improvement in the average record compared to the previous year’s results, adding: “out of the 465 A1s recorded by the WAEC; Ghana alone recorded 411 on the figure indicating a huge achievement for the nation.