Claim: NDC promised to scrap the double track system in 120 days
Source: Yaw Osei Adutwum (Former Minister of Education)
Verdict: False
Researched by Gifty Danso
The former Minister of Education, Yaw Osei Adutwum, speaking on JoyNews with Evans Mensah on September 16, 2025, claimed that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) promised to scrap the double-track system for Senior High Schools (SHSs) in its 120-day social contract.
Below is the exchange:
Host (Evans Mensah): “What’s your verdict on the way your successor has managed, first, the Free SHS policy? Happy with it? Is it keeping your legacy intact?”
Dr. Adutwum: “I think in some areas, they are keeping the legacy intact. In some areas, I’m not seeing any progression in the legacy, but at least whatever we left is being kept. So, STEM education, they haven’t done anything untoward. When you look at areas where they promised that within 120 days, they’ll eliminate the double track…” he partly said (between 1:10:51 and 1:13:30 of the interview).
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“The 120 days that they said they were going to phase it out within the 120 days, in fact, they put some schools on notice, the single tracks schools not to open because they were going to combine their (re) opening with all the other schools, they they realised that they couldn’t,” he reiterated in the interview.
Did the NDC say it would eliminate the double track in 120 days? This fact-check will verify the claim.
Fact-check
The 120-day social contract, a 26-point plan, was launched by President John Dramani Mahama and the NDC in the lead-up to the 2024 elections. The document contained a list of interventions or promises the NDC pledged to undertake in its first 120 days in office.
GhanaFact has previously analysed this 120-day social contract in our promise meter reports here, here, and here.
To specifically fact-check the claim by the Minister, we searched the 120-day document and found that only four interventions were listed for the educational sector. These included;
- Convene a national consultative conference on education to build consensus on needed improvements in the sector (Promise 9).
- Implement the ‘No-Academic-Fee’ policy for all first-year students in public tertiary institutions – universities, colleges of education, nursing training institutions, etc. (Promise 10).
- Introduce the following interventions: Free Tertiary Education for Persons with Disabilities (Promise 11).
- Commence the distribution of free sanitary pads to female students in primary and secondary schools (Promise 12).
None of these promises involved phasing out the double-track system within 120 days.
GhanaFact observed that while in opposition, President Mahama and some notable members of the NDC had promised to scrap the double-track system. This promise was also included in the party’s 2024 manifesto (page 92).
However, no timelines were given, and it was not included in the 120-day document. It was not until April 2025 when the Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, hinted that double-track would be phased out by 2027.
“We expect that by the year 2027, the double-track system will be a thing of the past,” the Minister is quoted to have said at an event with members of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) in Sunyani.
Verdict
Therefore, the claim is false.
