Claim: The Government has cancelled Free SHS
Source: X
Verdict: False
Researched by Gifty Danso
A viral post on X has claimed the John Dramani Mahama-led administration has cancelled the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) programme citing a directive from the Ghana Education Service (GES) to all Regional Directors of Education.
The post, accompanied by a memo from GES to the Directors, had the caption: “BREAKING: Govt cancels Free SHS, parents to begin paying for uniforms and other school items.”
The post has since gathered 709 likes, 110 reposts, 320 comments and been viewed by over 141,000 X users.
RelatedNews
GhanaFact also found accounts on Facebook circulating the same narratives as the X post (here, here, and here).
This fact-check report seeks to verify whether the government has cancelled Free SHS.
Fact-check
Free SHS is a flagship programme of the past government, which has been implemented since 2017.
The programme was introduced as an administrative directive, covering approved tuition fees (boarding, admission, library, science centre, computer lab, examination, utility, textbooks, a meal for day students, etc.) for public second-cycle students.
From the memo attached in the post on X, nowhere has the GES indicated the cancellation of the Free SHS programme. The memo as appropriately titled, SUPPLY OF SCHOOL UNIFORMS, SCHOOL CLOTH AND HOUSE DRESS FOR FIRST YEAR STUDENTS – 2024/2025 ACADEMIC YEAR, is a directive to regional directors of education regarding the procurement of certain school items.
GES directive regular – Kofi Asare explains
To understand the directives of the GES, GhanaFact spoke with Kofi Asare, the Executive Director of the education think tank, the Africa Education Watch, who indicated that the memo from the GES is regular, adding that it is part of the Free Senior High School Fee Structure, which outlines all the items the government pays for as part of the policy.
“The circular is regular. Since 2017, the government has been buying uniforms for Senior High School students. The letter you saw is a communication from the government agency to the regional education directorates, because they are responsible for managing secondary schools.
“They are the ones that headmasters report to directly. In such a context, you’ll find that the communication will go to the Regional Directors, so that they will, based on that, supervise – GH¢150 for house dress, GH¢100 for church cloth, and school uniform in the fee structure is GH¢180,” he said.
“So it guides the schools in order to engage suppliers so that they are able to do the procurement in line with the budget that the ministry has gotten approval for, which is the fee structure that I mentioned? So it is regular,” he explained.
In response to the false and misleading narratives around the memo, Kofi Asare advocated for a disinformation unit within the Education Ministry:
“I would have wished that the Ministry of Education had a more responsive disinformation unit. We had similar issues under the past government. How NDC people were making noise that NPP is behind WASSCE fraud. And then they try to politicise it. When they politicise the issue, then policy becomes a challenge, because we don’t even know how to solve it.
“So, I think that because we have a lot of politically sensitive policies in this country, it will be important for the Ministry of Education to have a disinformation unit to immediately respond to some of these things. So that no headmaster will go and extort any parent they should pay GH¢500 cedis for uniforms.”
GhanaFact also found that recently, the Ministry of Education added 25 private Senior High Schools to the Free SHS programme, as a measure to expand access to second-cycle education and reduce pressure on public SHSs.
During the 2024 election campaigns, then candidate John Dramani Mahama promised that his government will improve the Free SHS and expand access as he countered repeated claims by the then government that he would cancel the programme.
In his first State of the Nation Address in February 2025, Mahama said: “Mr Speaker, once again for emphasis, and for the record, I, John Dramani Mahama, President of the Republic of Ghana, will not cancel the free SHS programme. I am determined to make it better by improving its implementation.”
Any cancellation announcement would have made the news but there is no report to that effect.
Verdict
Therefore, the claim that the government has cancelled the Free SHS programme is False!
