Leader and founder of the Liberal Party of Ghana (LPG), Percival Kofi Akpaloo has asserted that the challenges facing the Free Senior High School (FSHS) programme is the evidence of how many Ghanaian children were denied the opportunity to acquire senior secondary school education before the advent of the Free SHS programme.
The 2020 presidential candidate for the LPG told Johnnie Hughes on the 3FM Sunrise Morning Show that he is worried about the challenges confronting the Free SHS implementation however, the programme has been beneficial to poor families and students who hitherto, couldn’t afford senior high school education.
“So far some people are not paying school fees, It’s okay though some people are complaining that it has become more expensive to take children to school, it would have been worse if they were paying tuition and boarding fees too.
“Yeah, it is worrying because the kids could have stayed home and that would have been worse than having them in school. So we should think about why those kids wanted to go to school but we were denying them and didn’t even make provisions for those who couldn’t pass the BECE to re-sit. We know the truth but we play politics everything” Kofi Akpaloo stated.
He also mentioned that the Liberal Party of Ghana would rather merge the Junior High School and the Senior High School and also make it a day school system to cut costs since the biggest expenditure of the Free SHS is on the boarding system. According to him, the money that would have been spent on the boarding will rather be used to ensure quality.
“We promised that we were going to merge the JHS with the SHS to become one school so that they will be on the same compound. Instead of having a boarding system, we were promising a day system so that we can channel the money into quality education. That was what we promised but we have not seen that yet” Kofi Akpaloo said.
By Samuel Afriyie Owusu|3new.com|Ghana