Executive Director of the African Education Watch (EduWatch), Kofi Asare has raised fresh concerns over the government’s financing strategy for the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) programme.
This follows Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu’s announcement that the policy will now be funded through the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund).
Speaking on Citi Eyewitness News on Wednesday, November 19, Mr. Asare argued that relying heavily on the GETFund poses severe risks to infrastructure development across the education sector.
According to him, the shift places an unsustainable burden on the Fund, which was originally designed to serve as the backbone for infrastructure financing at all levels of education.
He posits that the consequence will be particularly harsh for tertiary institutions, which already lack alternative funding buffers.
“The infrastructure backbone of the sector is the GETFund. There is virtually no capex in the GOG. GETFund is now a net funding source of Free Senior High School so if you do 4.2 billion of GETFund for Free SHS, that is 42% of the GETFund allocation for 2026. By the time you begin allocating GETFund to other interventions for Basic, Secondary, Tertiary, you are going to have virtually something very little by way of support for infrastructural development at the tertiary level. Basic education finds comfort under DACF. This year 2025 we have seen 261 Primary, KG and JHS being constructed under DACF and in the 2026 Budget we see same allocation through DACF.
“So there is some level of comfort for basic education under DACF but there is none for tertiary to survive and that is why I think that the allocation for education was inadequate especially where the oil revenues which were used to finance significantly Free SHS is no longer available to the sector,” he stated.
He suggested that government find other innovative ways to raise money to fund infrastructure in the tertiary level.
Source:Fiilafmonline/CitiNews
