The Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has reiterated government’s commitment on delivering policies that transforms the lives of Ghanaians. He made this comments on Citi TVs point of view yesterday, 17 Febraury, 2020. According to Mr. Oppong Nkrumah, the government has initiated a lot of social intervention programmes with a clear objective of investing in the lives of Ghanaians. One of such social intervention programmes he claimed is the Free Senior High School Programme (Free SHS).
“Free SHS is life transforming because it equips the most important resource of this country which are the human beings to increase their productivity in the years ahead of us. There is this old argument that let us finish building the schools before we roll out the programme but whose child should sit home? Our view is that you put all the kids in school, give them an equal opportunity to get an education today” he stated.
An increase in the number of enrolment for senior high schools has seen the Free SHS faced challenges. This prompted the government to introduce the double track system to address the challenges of overcrowding in most of our second cycle institutions. However, Mr. Oppong Nkrumah acknowledged that “the double track is a temporary measure but it is also necessary that everybody get an opportunity today even while we [the government] construct some infrastructures and take away the double track system and put us back onto the single track platform”.
“Of course, there is not enough infrastructure abi initio so what do you do? Do you say somebody’s child should stay home? In the initial stages, let us have a double track system and at the same time, let us work to have some more infrastructure so that we can be able to go back to single track. Now, a number of the schools are completing their infrastructure projects and hopefully, we will be rolling off the double track” he continued.
The government has made known its desire to properly position the country to take advantage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution through education. This Mr. Oppong Nkrumah pointed out that “for us [the government], investing in people’s lives like what we are doing is important. 1.2 million people we can directly say because of Free SHS now have an extra opportunity that they would not have. I am not sure you can point to any social intervention of that kind in this country”.
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