President-elect John Dramani Mahama has reiterated his pledge to maintain the Free Senior High School policy when he takes office next month.
The incoming president said his administration would explore ways to sustain the policy by ensuring it is properly financed.
Mr. Mahama, who was speaking on Voice of America in his first international interview since winning the election, described assertions that he intended to terminate the policy as “political talk and political gimmickry”.
“Free SHS has come to stay and it is not going anywhere. Nobody is going to scrap Free SHS.
“What we are going to do is to get dedicated funding for it so that it is better resourced than it is currently. There is a lot of waste in the system so we are going to help to make it efficient so that the teachers, the students and parents can get the best out of the Free SHS,” the president-elect explained.
He also pointed out that the disproportionate attention to Free SHS had left the basic school level under the radar as many classrooms lacked learning materials.
President-elect Mahama’s comments on the Free Senior High School policy come after conversations around the current government’s brainchild reignited in the public domain.
Few days ago, former Finance Minister in the erstwhile Mahama administration, Seth Terkper, urged that the policy be limited to only day students as is the case in certain advanced countries.
“What makes us think that we should support free SHS unfettered? he quizzed. “Unfettered in the sense that the government takes every cost.”
