President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said though his government’s flagship programme, the free Senior High School (SHS) policy might be labelled by its detractors as a mere political slogan which must be demonised, the programme has transformed the lives of Ghanaians who otherwise would have stopped school at the Junior High School (JHS) level.

According to the President, in the past 7 years since he has been president, he has met many people, young and old across the country who have told him “about the first person in their families and in their communities to have gone to Senior High School.”

He noted that not being able to go to secondary school for “lack of money was so widespread and an accepted phenomenon that it led to some people thinking Senior High School was not meant for them or their children or for people from their village, and, therefore, a child in the family finishing Junior High School and moving on to Senior High School was simply not factored in their expectations.

“Free SHS might be labelled by its detractors as a mere political slogan that must be demonised, but it is, in fact, a transformative programme that has broken myths and liberated minds. It is humbling on the one hand and frightening on the other, to think of the sheer number of talents that Free SHS has unearthed that would otherwise have ended their formal education at BECE.”

President Akufo-Addo is confident that the country will get more “engineers, doctors, architects, scientists, writers and poets out of the increased numbers of those attending Senior High School, who will go on to further education.”  

He emphasised that even if they stop at SHS, one can only imagine what “a million more Secondary School educated young people will do to our self-confidence and the value of our workforce. That, alone, makes Free SHS worthwhile.”

President Akufo-Addo was speaking at the State of the Nation Address in Parliament, on Tuesday, 27 February 2024.