WASSCE performance vindicates Free SHS – President

Tamale, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said the performance of students in the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) shows that government is upholding quality in the implementation of the Free Senior High School (SHS) programme. He said the performance of the 2021 batch of students, who were the pioneers of the Double-Track system, “which elicited much vilification and unfounded criticism of its introduction” was also one of the best in the country’s recent history.

The President said the performance of the Free SHS beneficiaries was better than those who wrote the WASSCE before the policy was introduced, adding: “There can no longer be any controversy about the validity of the Free SHS.”

“It is working. Let us forgo partisan parochial considerations and agree that the Free SHS has to be a part of our national educational architecture for at least a generation if not forever, for our nation will clearly be empowered.”

President Akufo-Addo, addressing the 70th Anniversary of the establishment of the Tamale Senior High School (TAMASCO) in Tamale on Saturday, announced that in 2022 government would expand the Free SHS programme to cover all first year students of Technical and Vocational Education and Training institutes.

TAMASCO was the first educational institution established in the then northern territory of the Gold Coast, now Ghana.

The event was attended by the Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and Dr Mohamed IBN Chambas, Special Representative of the Secretary General and Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa, who are all alumni of the school.

Source: Ghana News Agency