Double-track system to be ‘out’ from Free SHS program – Mahama
President John Dramani Mahama describing the double-track system as a challenge has said the central government is committed to eliminating the double-track system from the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) programme.
Speaking at his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) in his third time in government, John Mahama said the government would do it by accelerating school infrastructure expansion and completing stalled projects.
To fund this, President Mahama explained that the Education and Finance Ministries were working to uncap the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), for Second-cycle school projects.
“For the record, I, John Dramani Mahama, President of the Republic of Ghana, will not cancel the free SHS programme” saying the government was determined to make the free SHS better by improving its implementation.
“Also, for the record, students who have benefitted from the free SHS since its inception are about 3.4 million.
The figure of 5.1 million beneficiaries, as previously put out by the Akufo-Addo government, was an exaggerated and false narrative calculated to achieve political credit. While it has improved access, the implementation of free SHS leaves much to be desired.
The outcomes of the ongoing National Education Forum will guide our reforms in this sector,” President Mahama explained.
Meanwhile, former Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum has cautioned against calls to eliminate the double-track system in secondary education, warning that its removal could restrict access to free senior high school education for countless Ghanaian students.
The double-track system according to him is designed with a commitment to increase access to secondary education across Ghana, particularly in high-demand schools where facility limitations have historically restricted enrollment.
“This year, a number of schools are moving away from Double Track because they have enough facilities. So the whole premise is this, every young man growing up in Ghana wants to come to PRESEC. What does that mean for us as a nation? We need to provide more facilities so that PRESEC can educate more students for us.
But until we get those facilities, it makes sense to divide the PRESEC population into three, keep one at home while two of them are here until such a time that you can put up more buildings and all of them will come at the same time. So it’s well thought through.
This system has been used in a number of countries around the world, including the United States of America. So what we are introducing here is research-driven. If the double track is such a bad thing, Why is it that PRESEC has implemented it and they have gotten better outcomes than when there was no double track?” he told a Citi FM journalist last year.
