Free SHS: The Truth, the Lies, and the Reality

It was November 2024, barely two months to the end of his eight-year tenure as president, and Nana Akufo-Addo was speaking in a rare interview with a local media house – Hello FM in Kumasi, his party’s stronghold.

As is characteristic of politicians, he pounced on the opportunity to project his prowess in power to the populace.

“Before we came into office, at least 100,000 students every year could not transition from JHS to SHS,” he began. “Not because they lacked the grades or failed the BECE, but simply because their parents couldn’t afford the fees.”

“We couldn’t bear that…” he added.

Seven years before then, Akufo-Addo’s government had introduced “Free SHS”, arguably one of the most ambitious social intervention policies in Ghana’s history, as a solution to that problem.

As a presidential candidate for the NPP ahead of the 2016 general elections, Akufo-Addo made the policy the marquee headliner in his manifesto.

Ably aided by this policy promise, he ended up defeating his opponent, incumbent president John Dramani Mahama.

Akufo-Addo did not dilly-dally in implementing the policy – it took off shortly after he assumed office in the 2017/2018 academic year.

The main aim, as Akufo-Addo explained, was to expand access to all students who were qualified to attend SHS by removing any financial barriers to their continued education, with “Access, Equity and Quality” as guiding principles.

“It is not a political gimmick,” the former president said. “It’s a development initiative.”

As of July 2024, a few months to the end of Akufo-Addo’s second term in office, GHS 9.9 billion ($640 million) had been spent on the program, according to then Finance Minister Mohammed Amin Adam. It was jointly funded by the Government of Ghana and the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA), which is sourced from Ghana’s oil revenue.

Yet, while over 3.1 million students nationwide have been beneficiaries of the policy as of the 2023/24 academic year (according to official figures from mid-year budget statements), it has experienced significant implementation challenges, imposing a big burden on the various actors within the SHS education chain.

Most teachers who spoke to The Fourth Estate on condition of anonymity said they were forced by Ghana Education Service (GES) regulations to keep their views on the implementation of the policy to themselves and not speak publicly about Free SHS.

They said they risked being questioned and queried, as well as possibly losing their jobs or being unfavorably transferred. “Why didn’t you speak up?” The Fourth Estate recently asked a teacher in Tamale. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he responded.

With the NPP government out of power and the fears of intimidation out of the way, The Fourth Estate visited schools in the Northern, Ashanti, Central and Greater Accra regions in January 2024 to ascertain the challenges of the policy on the ground.

Inadequate Infrastructure

According to GES’s quality input variables, the number of students each teacher is supposed to handle per secondary school class should not be more than 35.

Yet, the situation on the ground is a heartbreaking violation, which unfortunately has been necessitated by the Free SHS policy.

At the Tamale Islamic Senior High School, The Fourth Estate found that the average number of students per class is now around 70, when the average pre-Free SHS was 40 – an increase of about 75%. There are 42 classrooms serving a student population of over 5000 in the school.

“There are even two home economics classes with 107 and 114 students each,” says the assistant headmaster of Tamale Islamic Senior High School, Zakaria Habib. “How to even move in the classroom to teach is the problem. They do food and nutrition and clothing and textiles, and it is difficult for them to organise practicals [due to the numbers].”

There are 3000 females at the Tamale Islamic Senior High School, with a majority of them being boarders. They have to share a single dormitory that has only 16 rooms. “You can imagine,” says the assistant headmaster. “Some of them even sleep outside on the verandahs.”

Overcrowding of classrooms and dormitories was a common problem in all the schools we visited from the north to the south of the country.

“The dormitories are congested,” says Ebenezer Obeng, headmaster at Edinaman SHS in Elmina.

Mr. Obeng says before Free SHS, the student population was below 2000 in his school, but it has now almost doubled to close to 4000.

“We don’t have beds in some of the rooms, so students have to lay their mattresses on the floor to sleep,” he says. “The pressure of student enrolment on facilities makes the work difficult.”

Almost as prevalent as the problem of inadequate spaces for students to learn and sleep, is the related issue of scarce classroom furniture. At the University Practice SHS in Cape Coast, The Fourth Estate found a lot of students having to make do without desks, sitting on plastic chairs while laying books on their laps to read and write.

“Some years ago, I went to one of the classrooms and I wept. I shed tears because I met a girl sitting on the floor. There were no seats,” says headmaster Charles Boamah.

“I lifted the girl and hugged her, and I apologised to her. I said: ‘I didn’t sign you up for this. ’ I was so disappointed that I had brought in someone’s daughter to sit on the floor. The facilities are deteriorating while the enrolment increases,” he continues.

“We’ve given access to students, which for me is the best thing about the programme. But access to which facilities? There are no beds to sleep on in dormitories, desks to sit on in classrooms and space to eat in the dining halls. If you see the congestion in the dormitories, you would think we are rearing students.”

At Achimota School in Accra, headmaster Ebenezer Acquaah says admissions have increased by over 200% since the policy was introduced.

He says though the school’s endowed old students’ group, the OAA, has helped with infrastructure, the school still faces major challenges in adjusting to the Free SHS policy.

“The infrastructure cannot support the population,” he says. “Free SHS has brought about increase in access to schools, but the corresponding increase in infrastructure has been slow.”

In other schools The Fourth Estate visited, the situation was sadly same – limited classroom and dormitory spaces as well as inadequate facilities straining under the weight of soaring student numbers. Even in the dining halls, groups of students have to take turns to be served their meals as the halls cannot accommodate them all at the same time.

“Our school is over-subscribed,” says St. Louis headmistress Ama Kyerewaa Benefo. “When the admitted students first come in, you’d think we are holding a durbar here. Our numbers have increased more than three times.”

The headmaster of Presec, David Odjija, also says: “Before Free SHS, the numbers were about 800 a year. We are running something close to 3000 now. Even with the two-year groups that are in school, we still have issues because of the numbers.

Over the years, we’ve had additional facilities, but they have still not been enough to contain the students.”

Transitional System

Another deficiency discovered was the ‘transitional system’, and how it has adversely affected academic performance.

The transitional system (formerly known as the ‘double track system’) is where two-year groups are in school at any given time – leaving one year group to stay at home, often for more months than they stay in school. It was introduced in an attempt to address the problem of congestion in classrooms and dormitories. However, it appears to have created a few more problems without resolving the one it was meant to resolve.

Baba Misbawu, the assistant headmaster at Kalpohin SHS (Kalisco) in Tamale, says students in rural areas who don’t have access to vacation classes tend to forget all they were taught in a trimester after spending many months at home.

“When they come back, you may have to start afresh, and certainly, this can affect their performance at the end of the day,” he says.

“It [transitional system] has really affected us,” Selman Basiratupana, head girl at the Tamale Girls SHS, tells The Fourth Estate.

“Sometimes we can spend two months in school and four months at home. A good number of students don’t get the privilege to attend classes while at home,” she adds.

Beatrice Natinaba, a student at Tamale Islamic SHS, also has concerning complaints: “We don’t even get to finish lessons, because the time we spend in school is short. Actually, we stay in the house more than we stay in school.”

The headmaster of Edinaman SHS, Ebenezer Obeng, also says the transitional system has increased the workload on teachers, adding that school staff barely get to go on break throughout the whole year, as there is always a set of students to be attended to.

This, he says, has brought about fatigue for teachers, especially, as well as a lack of time to maintain facilities.

“Throughout the whole year, we have just 10 days break – during Christmas time,” he says. “We also barely get to fumigate the dormitories, and so the bed bugs keep worrying us.”

“We never rest,” TI Ahmadiya’s assistant headmistress Evelyn Assabil says in agreement. “Officially, we have no rest.”

Disbursement of funds

Most headmasters The Fourth Estate spoke to also stated that delays in the disbursement of bursaries and other funds have made it very difficult to cater to the urgent needs of their increasing student populations.

They complain that funds meant for infrastructure expansion to take in more students, and those meant for the provision of teaching and learning materials, as well as living essentials – like food and water –are often held up in the government’s bureaucratic maze.

“My worry is how Free SHS is resourced; how it is financed,” says Ebenezer Obeng.

“Feeding grant has not been paid for about two months now,” says Charles Boamah, speaking in January 2025. “Ask me how I am feeding the students? I am borrowing. I’ve become a beggar.”

“Delays [in funding] have been the major problem,” says Baba Misbawu of Kalpohin SHS in Tamale. “Funding for tables and chairs, text books, food…”

A leaked letter by the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) to the former Minister for Education, Dr. Yaw Adutwum, dated 20th December 2024 and titled “Urgent Request for Release of All Outstanding Funds to Schools”, complained about the funding inadequacies affecting Free SHS.

CHASS advised against the reopening of secondary schools on January 3rd, 2025, if all outstanding funds were not paid by then. Yet schools reopened on that date.

Isaac Owusu-Aduomi, the national secretary of CHASS, tells The Fourth Estate that funding of the policy has been “the most dominant challenge”.

“Indeed, the programme, though very fantastic, was implemented without looking for where to get funding,” he says.

“And if funding was found, then we at CHASS did not feel it. It has really been hard being a head of a second cycle institution at this time.”

Dr. Peter Anti-Partey, an education policy analyst and executive director for the Institute for Education Studies (IFEST), points out that the Akufo-Addo government cared more about the politics of the policy than its funding.

PTA to PA

For years, the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) in Senior High schools played a key role in improving teaching and training outcomes for students.

But with the introduction of the Free SHS programme, the government rather heavy-handedly prohibited teachers from being part of PTAs – taking the ‘T’ out and leaving just the PA (Parents’ Associations). This has meant that only parents of students – bar their teachers – now periodically meet to take decisions regarding their wards and how the schools are administered.

Almost all the heads of schools the Fourth Estate spoke to decried this development, complaining that the sidelining of teachers has been disastrous, given the vital role they play in the lives of students in boarding houses and classrooms across the nation.

“If the teachers stay out, and there are issues in the classrooms, how do the parents get to know?” says Achimota School head, Ebenezer Acquaah. “If the parents are to sit somewhere and take decisions for the school, how feasible is that?”.

“PTAs should be revived,” Isaac Owusu-Aduomi of CHASS says, simply.

Performance of students

In December 2023, six years into the implementation of Free SHS, former vice president Dr Mahamudu Bawumia claimed in a Facebook post that Free SHS had led to improved student performance, especially in the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) as well as increased competitiveness in national and regional quizzes and contests.

“Our SHS students go from Keta SHS to Harvard University and excel. Our girls at Mamfe Senior High go for a world competition in robotics and win against teams from the USA, Germany and South Korea. Our boys from Prempeh College have won robotics world competitions against global competitors many times,” he wrote.

“Yet when these same students excel at WASSCE some people for political reasons even question the integrity of their results! Why do some always believe that it is impossible for our students or our people to be the best? It is possible.”

In his last State of the Nation Address in January 2025, Nana Akufo-Addo said Free SHS was responsible for Ghana’s impressive performance in the 2023 WASSCE – which saw the country record some of its best results in core subjects in years: 77% passed Social Studies; 73% passed English, 67% passed Integrated Science and 62% passed Mathematics.

“The 2023 WASSCE results stand out as the best in the history of the examination,” Nana Akufo-Addo proudly proclaimed. “Our reforms have not only expanded access but also enhanced the quality of education.”

As Akufo-Addo, his party and supporters pat themselves on the back for introducing free SHS and doggedly implementing it, Dr Anti-Partey believes, however, that the improvement in academic performances cannot necessarily be attributed to the initiative.

“There are so many variables that determine student performance. Thousands of them,” he tells The Fourth Estate. “You need to scientifically prove this that Free SHS has led to improved student performance. We don’t have any such study published in our system.”

Free?

Aside Ghana, other African countries like Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, Malawi, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Zambia have all operationalised free secondary school policies.

Yet while international bodies such as the African Union and many United Nations agencies have expressed approval of these interventions, there are still critical concerns.

In the Ghana case, there are questions as to whether Akufo-Addo’s Free SHS policy is in reality “free”.

Has it sufficiently made secondary education accessible and affordable? Many believe not.

Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), an education policy think-tank, has claimed that between the 2019/20 and 2022/23 academic years, 194,862 students from low-income households who were placed in various senior high schools could not enrol due to financial challenges.

“The average government spending per student under the Free SHS policy between 2017 and 2022 was GHS 1,241, with parents spending Ghc 4,185 per annum,” Eduwatch pointed out in a document titled Financial Burden Analysis of Ghana’s Free Senior High School Policy. “The government has absorbed 23% of the cost of [secondary education] pre-2017, while parents continue to bear 77%.”

“Paying for the boarding school needs for my daughter has been such a drain on me,” Mrs. Efua Asante, a parent at St. Louis SHS, tells The Fourth Estate. “People underestimate how much parents have to commit before their wards can go to school, even in this era of free SHS. I tell you, it’s not that free!”