President of the National Union of Ghana Students(NUGS), Dennis Appiah Larbi-Ampofo, says the government should not allow parents to pay school fees for their wards under the Free Senior High School (SHS) Programme.
According to him, exploring such options will create classism in schools.
“There’ll be classism. Now there’ll be a different way of treating those whose parents are paying and those whose parents are not paying. Even when I was in secondary school when teachers organized extra classes, we saw how teachers treated those who came and paid for their extra classes and those who did not come,” he argued.
Mr Larbi-Ampofo admitted that although the option is a “brilliant idea”, the country is not ready for it.
“It’s a brilliant idea, but practically, this country is not ready for that. Let’s not even go there,” he warned in an interview with Joy News.
He also warned that should government resort to this option, it would “run this country into an apartheid system of a sort where people who pay for Free SHS are treated differently.”
In its sixth year of implementation, major stakeholders in the education sector and some politicians have called for the review of the Free SHS programme to relieve the government of the financial burden it poses in its current state.
The Free SHS policy has been under scrutiny because of problems with feeding and, to an extent, infrastructural challenges.
These issues have led some schools to consider shutting down because they struggle to feed their students.
Some high schools have struggled with a shortage of food items because of funding and supply constraints.
