Private school operators petrified over free SHS initiative

The Conference of Heads of Private Second Cycle Schools (CHOPSS) has openly expressed concern over the Government’s much reported free SHS initiative scheduled to be implemented in the next academic year.

Speaking to the Accra based Citi FM, the group’s public relations officer, Mme Naphtali Kyei Baffour, said the group believes that the initiative may put them out of business.

“It is an undeniable fact that the private sector is the engine of growth for development. Therefore any policy that seeks to collapse the activities of the private sector should be reconsidered.

That is why we believe that inasmuch as the [Free SHS] policy is very good as it seeks the well-being and interests of students, parents, and Ghanaians as a whole, it is also imperative that as we sit, we look at factors that can help the private ones to be sustained.”

According to Mme Baffour, concerned private schools are sustained from absorbing students who obtained low grades at the JSS level and therefore cannot attend the public schools of their choice. She said the Free SHS policy could makes it less likely that the students would enroll in their schools.

With the introduction of free SHS, we are yet to hear from the government if they are going to the old system where the cutoff point will be pegged at [aggregate] 30 or they will still operate with the existing one like aggregate 40, 42. If it still happens like that, then those who did not qualify for admission into public institutions that we relied on, now because it is free and they will still be qualified, it means that come two years, three years, four years, there will be no private school existing.”