System wrestling with effects of free school programme

The free senior high school programme (FSHS) former president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo introduced in 2017 has turned into a curse for Ghana’s tertiary education sector. The programme churns out more graduates than the universities can accommodate and contributes to unemployment.

All eyes are now on President John Mahama, who returned to take the reins in January 2025. Mahama promised an overhaul of the education system to ensure it becomes “fit for purpose”.

The FSHS was aimed at making secondary education open to all, irrespective of financial status, and was hailed as a blessing for poor children. However, eight years down the line and on top of the numbers and unemployment issues, many of the high schoolers who qualify cannot use the opportunity due to financial constraints.

After considering the situation, Mahama has admitted that, though the policy has improved access to education, its implementation leaves much to be desired. “Of the 460,000 secondary graduates Ghana delivers annually, 55% qualify for tertiary education, and only 35% (161,000) enrol, leaving over 300,000 without access,” he said in the State of the Nation address on 27 February.

Jonas Ntow is one of the students affected by the negative effects the programme has. Ntow, who finished high school in 2021, said: “I qualified to enter the university, but because my parents could not afford the fees, I have to stay at home.” He now drives a hail-and-ride car in Accra.

Problems rooted in all education levels

But the FSHS policy does not just cause problems at a tertiary level. Sampson Avinu, a teacher at the Anlo Senior High School in the Volta Region, told University World News: “Due to the removal of the cut-off aggregate as a requirement for admission to senior high schools, the quality of students admitted to the schools has reduced drastically. This means our students are not being prepared well enough for university.”

Avinu said: “Many of the pupils in the basic school have failed to prepare adequately for the Basic Education Certificate of Education (BECE), adding that “teachers at the basic level are partly to be blamed for this problem”.

He said many of the teachers in basic schools across the country do not put in any effort into teaching because they assume the students would be placed in high school, regardless of their grade for the BECE.

Without sufficient preparation for high school education, Avinu said, there is a huge learning gap because these students “come to high school unprepared and not ready to learn, too, because, in their minds, the situation in high school is the same as that of the junior high school (JHS).

Avinu, who teaches elective mathematics (further mathematics), said some students in his class cannot do basic fractions and cannot do basic arithmetic. “I always have to digress and take time to explain these basic concepts from JHS to them.”

Institutions bursting at the seams

Mahama said the free policy coupled with the poor admission procedures has resulted in universities admitting more students than necessary, adding that the “rising enrolment has strained university infrastructure, causing overcrowding and inadequate accommodation”.

John Dadzie-Mensah, director of planning, monitoring, and evaluation at the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), said that, with the coming into force of the FSHS, the universities have recorded increasing numbers of students. If they cannot be accommodated in public universities, they must go to private institutions, which they cannot afford.

Dadzie-Mensah told University World News that, because the public universities are overcrowded, they have started establishing branch campuses to accommodate more students, and running weekend and evening sessions, which means they are admitting even more students than they should.

He said most students prefer public universities because they have free tuition and are prestigious. However, when everything fails, they finally turn to the private institutions. This has also led to these institutions expanding without a corresponding increase in lecturers.

Demand affects quality

Dadzie-Mensa said the negative effect on the student-lecturer ratio also affects the quality of education. To meet the demand, some of the private universities have introduced an online option for students who cannot afford to study on-campus.

He agreed that these expansion programmes have also affected quality. To be able to stop the issues from getting out of hand, the GTEC as regulator must respond accordingly. For this reason, it has also attempted expanding to meet the needs of the institutions.

Dadzie-Mensa said GTEC has deployed the accreditation management information system, which will allow public institutions to apply for the accreditation of their courses online, with the hope that it will reduce the time it takes to approve their applications.

As GTEC is working to clean up the tertiary sector, Mahama said he is determined to expand access, improve quality, and align tertiary education with national goals, particularly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programmes.

He said the government is introducing a no-fee stress policy to eliminate tertiary admission fees, which currently serve as a barrier to higher education for some students. This will be supported by an enhanced Student Loan Scheme called Student Loan Plus. The no-fee policy will also cover all persons with disabilities who gain admission to tertiary institutions. Additionally, TVET enrolment will be increased from 11% to 20% to boost employability.