Stakeholders’ Perspective on the Effect of the Free SHS Policy on Government’s Basic Education Investment and How it Affects Academic Performance of Junior High Schools in the Akuapem North Municipality

Abstract

Education is an important sector that the Government of Ghana is investing a lot of money into in order to secure the quality of education in the country. However, it is realized that though the budgetary allocation for the sector is huge, the assigned budget for basic schools keep reducing over the years. The higher cut of the budget is allocated to the Senior High Schools for the Free SHS Programme at the expense of the smooth administration of the basic schools. The intent of this research therefore was to investigate whether the implementation of the Free SHS Programme has had a knock-on effect on government’s investment into basic education and how it has affected academic performance in the Akuapem North Municipality in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The investment was conceptualized into five teaching and learning inputs namely: school building construction, teacher quantity and quality, pedagogical materials, provision of food and integrated health systems as these inputs are known to impact academic performance. The research was catalogued from 2017 to 2022 as 2017 marks the inception of the programme. The study revealed that since the inception of the programme, there were no new infrastructure established by the government, supply of pedagogical materials were not forthcoming, number of teachers were enough but handicapped, the schools did not benefit from the School Feeding Program and the first aid boxes in the schools were not well stocked. The academic performance of pupils were seen to be average and the study validated the possibility of a policy knock-on effect of the Free SHS on government’s investment into basic education and the fact that academic performance had declined over the stated period of years in these basic schools. Based on the findings, the study recommended that government increases budgetary allocation for the basic level, invests in infrastructure, implements the school feeding programme at the JHS level, as well as partner with donor agencies to support the funding of the sector especially at the basic school level.