Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin has described the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) coverage offered beneath former President Nana Akufo-Addo as essentially the most impactful social intervention in Ghana’s Fourth Republic.

Addressing members on the Young Commons Forum on the University of Cape Coast on February 21, 2026, the Effutu MP maintained that even if the programme continues to generate public debate, its affect on get entry to to secondary schooling is unquestionable.

He stated the initiative considerably remodeled the learning panorama by means of getting rid of monetary limitations that after avoided many scholars from advancing past the fundamental degree.

According to Afenyo-Markin, the size and national succeed in of the Free SHS programme distinguish it from different public insurance policies carried out for the reason that go back to constitutional rule in 1993.

He argued that whilst grievance is inevitable in policymaking, the programme’s effects talk for themselves.

“The critics can be loud and say all they can about the Free SHS but by far, without arguments, it stands as the most emblematic social intervention of the Akufo-Addo administration,” he stated.

He additional described it as “the most consequential social intervention in Ghana’s Fourth Republic,” emphasising that the removing of charges on the secondary degree opened doorways for hundreds of scholars from low-income families.

Introduced in 2017 in a while after President Akufo-Addo took workplace, the Free SHS coverage was once designed to scale back inequality in get entry to to schooling and construct a extra professional personnel.

Since its rollout, the programme has enabled loads of hundreds of scholars around the nation to enrol in senior highschool, reshaping participation in secondary schooling and turning into a defining hallmark of the previous management.

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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by means of Readers and Contributors in this platform don’t essentially constitute the perspectives or coverage of Multimedia Group Limited.