By Iddi Yire 

Accra, June 19, GNA – Mr Haruna Iddrisu, the Minister of Education, has announced the Government’s decision to review the decentralized Senior High School (SHS) food supply programme. 

Addressing the Presidential Press Corps at the Presidency in Accra, Mr Iddrisu expressed concern about the quantities and quality of food being served in the senior high schools under the decentralized SHS food supply policy. 

Mr Iddrisu said the implementation of the decentralized SHS food supply programme was a pledge in the ruling National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) manifesto to get the programme back to headmasters, bursars and others to do it in order to keep the local economy going.  

The Minister stated that, however it appears that at many levels, the quantities and quality of the food was just not good enough. 

“Government is considering a reversal of their policy, but at least for perishables and others, up to 40 per cent of that provision will still be provided by the conference of heads of secondary school, whilst we get a rule for the Ghana Buffer Stock (Company) and then the Ghana Commodity Exchange to deal with grains and others,” Mr Iddrisu said. 

“But for the present, what is important is timely quality delivery of food.” 

Touching on higher education, Mr Iddrisu said the Government’s policy remained unchanged.  

He said Access, Relevance, and Quality (ARC), remained the hallmark of President John Dramani Mahama’s education policy.  

He said the Government was encouraging some universities to go into public-private partnership, which would not compromise the integrity of the training of the universities and institutions to expand access to accommodation and lecture theaters. 

“What we have to deal with is that whilst we saw exponential increases in the number of students accessing free senior high school, we needed to commensurately prepare for their admission into institutions of higher education,” Mr Iddrisu said. 

“That we may suffer a deficit of infrastructure, so I’ve made a strong request to the President to make the Ministry of Education and some of its agencies on infrastructure to qualify for his big push initiative, so that rapidly we can build some infrastructure, expand lecture theaters and accommodation to accommodate the increases from the free senior high school initiative.” 

With regard to the promise to end the double track system in SHSs, Mr Haruna said the Government was piloting 50 to 60 private schools; stating that they would be part of the school placement system.  

“So, hitherto, they would have gone there as private students. Now, they will be sponsored by the state, but trained by those private schools in order to have access to free senior high school education,” he said. 

The Minister said whilst the nation continued to debate how to adequately fund free senior high school, President John Dramani Mahama had directed the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) to make adequate  provision for the free senior high school, amounting to almost four billion Ghana cedis.  

In the past, the free senior high school secretariat got its support and resources from allocation from the annual budget funding amount. 

GNA 

Christian Akorlie