Free SHS takes off smoothly in Kumasi
Admission processes for the free senior high school (SHS) programme took off smoothly in the Kumasi metropolis, with fresh students and their parents forming long queues at the various schools to present their placement letters for admission.
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While most of the parents were excited about the fact that they have not paid anything for their children to enrol, few others were unhappy about the fact that though they did not come from the region, their children had been admitted as day students.
School authorities the Daily Graphic spoke to confirmed their readiness to admit the students and that they had received the full complement of the textbooks for all the core subjects.
Parents
At the Anglican Senior High School in the Kumasi Metropolis, Maame Serwaa, a single-mother of three who said her first son could not go to the SHS two years ago because of lack of resources, praised President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the opportunity.
She said the transparency of the current process had also eliminated the situation where some influential people displaced children from poor homes at endowed schools and took the Daily Graphic team to the notice board to confirm that her son’s name was on the board.
An elated trader, Maame Yaa, said she and her husband had been saving towards the day because they doubted the free SHS policy till their daughter was given the admission letter to start school.
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Regional Director
The Ashanti Regional Director of the Ghana Education Service, Mrs Mary Owusu-Akyiaw, described the process at the various schools she had visited as satisfactory and said the teething problems being witnessed by the various schools were normal with admission and every new policy.
She advised parents and headmasters of the various schools to exercise restraint as the process unfolds.
Headmaster
The Headmaster of the T. I. Ahmadiyya Senior High School-Kumasi, Alhaji Yakub A. B. Abubakar, said the school received 1,000 students, one-third of whom would be made day students.
He said the school had already received the textbooks for all the core subjects and that there was no problem with feeding the first-year students because they had prepared for their feeding even before the money from the government hit the school’s accounts.