Minister of Finance discloses amount spent on Free SHS since 2017

The central government has spent GH¢9.9 billion on the flagship Free Senior High School (Free SHS) since it was introduced in September 2017, the Minister of Finance, Dr Mohammed Amin Adam disclosed at the 2024 Mid-year Budget Review

Presenting the 2024 Mid-Year Budget Review in Parliament, the Finance Minister indicated that about 5.7 million Ghanaian school-going children had benefitted from the initiative, many of whom may not have had the opportunity.

“Additionally, we are constructing 10 STEM Schools and 10 STEM Centres across the country, and we have distributed 900,000 tablets to secondary school students.

Quality education has been given considerable focus. The performance of the students at WASSCE in 2023 is also the best since 2015,” Dr Mohammed Amin Adam told Parliament on Tuesday.

Mr Adam said the government had disbursed about GH¢38 million as a Capitation Grant for the first half of 2024 to ensure schools had adequate resources to provide quality education.  

He said funds had been released for the payment of feeding grants to all public special schools for the 2024 academic year in support of vulnerable students. 

“Mr. Speaker, it is worth noting that the capitation grant has increased from GH¢5.00 in 2016 to GH¢15.00 in 2024,” he added.

In related news, Deputy Minister for Education, Reverend John Ntim Fordjour says the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led government between 2017 and now has invested more than GH¢114 billion to transform Ghana’s education.

Speaking on the floor of parliament, the Revered Minister emphasized that this investment extends beyond the widely discussed Free Senior High School (SHS) program, which constitutes only about 11% of the total expenditure.

“The message delivered by the president is the most inspiring and a true reflection of the transformation that has taken place in this country across various sectors in the past seven years

Education under the extraordinary leadership of Akufo-Addo/Bawumia, has demonstrated that Ghana is in a much better place on the front of education than we were some 10 years ago. In infrastructure, we are in a better place than we were in 2014

The kind of investment that has gone into education between 2017 and now is over GH¢114 billion. The investment made into Free SHS is just about 11 per cent of that total investment. The rest of the investment was targeted at transforming every sector of our education,” Ntim Fordjour told Parliament.