CHOPSS demands share of Free SHS pie

Heads of private senior high schools have reiterated their call for partnership with the government to deal with the challenges confronting the implementation of the free senior high school programme.

They complain that the implementation of the free SHS programme is gradually collapsing their schools since they hardly get enrolments.

Their concerns also come at a time there are infrastructural challenges in most of the public schools due to the high numbers.

Kyei Baffuor, Public Relations Officer of the Conference of Head of Private Secondary Schools (CHOPSS) told Chief Jerry Forson on Ghana Yensom on Accra 100.5FM Tuesday, 31 July that: “The number of students in the SHSs will increase in the coming years. Already, there are issues with the high numbers, which is affecting the schools, and, so, the government should listen to us for the partnership so we can achieve the common goal.”

Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has said the poor performance of many private senior high schools is the reason for their exclusion from the implementation of government’s Free SHS programme.

“If the level of performance of the private schools and the public schools are at par, you begin to talk about them but the vast majority of the private schools that have survived based on cut-offs are not doing well. So, unless we find a way to help them fix the underachievement, I can’t force a parent to send the children to that school,” Dr Adutwum explained.

To absorb the increasing number of students in the various government second-cycle institutions, President Nana Akufo-Addo has announced a two-track SHS system.

This is expected to solve infrastructural challenges confronting the programme. However, private SHSs believe the move is unnecessary since they have the space and capacity to absorb over 125,000 students if only government ropes them into the programme.

But Dr Adutwum insists that: “The nation is better off if I can create more opportunities for the poor, which we did last year, to access top-performing schools so that they can turn around their families”.

For him, any intervention needs to be focused “on the benefit to the parent and not benefit to the entrepreneur or the school owner”.

Source: Class FM