Mahama’s free tertiary education promise knee-jerk – Scholarships boss

The Registrar of the Ghana Scholarship Secretariat Kingsley Agyemang says the opposition NDC’s promise to absorb all cost element for the 2020/2021 fresh tertiary students is knee-jerk.

According to him, the promise by the opposition party is only intended to win votes in the upcoming Presidential and Parliamentary polls.

“NDC’s policy of free tertiary payment is a knee-jerk reaction after they rejected the free SHS policy. NDC’s program is laughable and besides talk is cheap. Mr Mahama said if he had money, he wouldn’t spend it on free SHS,” he told Francis Abban on the Morning Starr Wednesday.

He, however, stressed the Akufo-Addo government is committed to assisting the new tertiary students with scholarships.

“For the first batch of free SHS graduates, GH¢20M has been set aside to take care of that stream of students that will enter our tertiary institutions,” he said.

Meanwhile, the NDC says it has done costing for its promised Free tertiary fee for the 2020/2021 academic year students.

According to the party, the promise was made after the necessary cost elements were considered by the education subcommittee of its manifesto committee.

Speaking to Starr News former deputy Education Minister Alex Kyeremeh said the party will work with the various public universities to ensure smooth implementation of the program if they win the polls.

“We will add everyone who goes to tertiary. Going forward, we are even going to add private schools to the free SHS. If you do the cost analyses for students who benefitted from the free SHS, it’s about GH¢1,200 for a year per student. The moment you get admission into tertiary, the schools will have the numbers and will have to add up."

"So we’ll put the numbers together and give the money to the schools, instead of parents paying. We have offered Ghanaians ‘“fa ninyinaa” and ‘Kyemu P3? and the NPP is promising scholarship [which is already there]. So it’s up to them to choose whether they want “fa ninyinaa” and ‘Kyeme P3? or the scholarship”.