Claim: Due to inadequate funding, it will be difficult to sustain Free SHS – John Mahama

Source: Daily Insights via NPP Projects Bureau (Facebook)

Verdict: False

Researched by Alfa Shaban

A visual card produced and shared by Daily Insights GH on December 23, 2024, claimed President-elect, John Dramani Mahama had said it would be difficult to sustain the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) policy. 

The claim “Due to inadequate funding, it will be difficult to sustain Free SHS” attributed to  John Mahama has since been shared by multiple social media users, including NPP Projects Bureau, a Facebook page with 167,000 followers affiliated with the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The Free SHS Brouhaha 

The policy was first proposed by then-candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in 2008. 

Despite losing that election, Akufo-Addo still made Free SHS a major policy proposition in 2012, when he again lost the election. He carried it into the 2016 election, in which he emerged victorious.

In September 2017, his first year in office, Akufo-Addo rolled out the Free SHS policy by ending the Progressive Free SHS that had been started a year earlier by his predecessor, John Dramani Mahama.

Eight years later, in 2024, Free SHS remained a major campaign issue even with Akufo-Addo exiting office. The narrative was that unless voters elect Akufo-Addo’s Vice President and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer, Mahamudu Bawumia as the next president, Free SHS would be cancelled by Bawumia’s main contender, John Mahama and his party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC.)

The 2024 Mahama campaign also mounted a strong response to the NPP’s narrative that he would cancel the programme. The NDC’s 2024 manifesto was clear about what the party would do with the policy, there were multiple adverts to dispel any cancellation fears and Mahama after his victory restated his position on the policy.

This report seeks to verify the claim attributed to John Mahama.

Fact-Check

President-elect John Mahama has spoken about the funding challenges facing Ghana’s education sector generally. He is quoted to have said during a meeting with stakeholders in the sector: “At the last count, 1.3 million Ghanaian children at the basic level do not have basic furniture to sit and study. And so we have a crisis at the basic level. Even though a lot of money is going to the secondary level, it does not come from a dedicated fund, and there is a lot of waste and inefficiency in the way it is being spent on the Free SHS.”

Mahama’s most recent statement on the Free SHS policy was during a December 15, 2024 interview with the Voice Of America (VOA) and the President-elect, John Mahama said;  “Free SHS has come to stay and it is not going anywhere. Nobody is going to scrap Free SHS. 

“What was said was political talk and it was just political gimmickry. Free SHS is not going anywhere. We are going to maintain the policy. What we are going to do is to get dedicated funding for it, so that it is better resourced than it is currently,” he added. 

The NDC in its manifesto (page 125 of paragraph 5.1.3) affirmed that it would maintain the policy and even expand it to include private schools.

“The next NDC government will: abolish the double-track system to restore a stable academic calendar; extend Free SHS to cover students in private Senior High Schools.”

On funding the programme, the government promised to “provide a dedicated and sustainable funding source for quality secondary education by ring-fencing a percentage of our oil proceeds.”

It is worth noting that Daily Insights, the organisation behind the flyer bearing the claim, is one of the faceless X accounts flagged for sharing false content before and during the 2024 general elections. The pro-government, NPP Projects Bureau, is known to share such content even when the claims have been found to be false.

GhanaFact has reached out to Daily Insights GH through a message on X but we have yet to receive a reply.

Verdict

Therefore, the claim attributed to the president-elect is rated False.

Note: The script has been amended to reflect Mahama’s comments at a meeting with stakeholders in the education sector.

AS/TA