Caretaker Minister of Finance says out of the 1119 infrastructural projects for Senior High Schools government has completed 539 of them.

Presenting the 2021 Budget Statement in Parliament, Friday, he indicated that this infrastructural development is to help accommodate the increasing number of students in the schools.

This, Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu explained, is a result of the implementation of the Free SHS Programme, which has caused “an increased demand for secondary education”.

According to him, “the total number of beneficiaries for the 2019/2020 academic year was 1,200,580 students”.

“Mr. Speaker, a total of 539 projects out of 1,119 senior high school infrastructural projects have been completed to accommodate the increased enrollment of Free SHS students.”

He added that Government has also completed 28 Community Day Senior High Schools (E-Blocks) under the Secondary Education Improvement Programme (SEIP).

Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said that the government recognizes the need for these infrastructural projects to be completed to ensure effective teaching and learning.

This statement supports the Ghana Education Service‘s (GES) decision to suspend the double-track system employed in Senior High Schools this academic year starting with the first-year students.

Announcing the decision on JoyNews, the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Prof Kwasi Amankwah said nearly all the schools across the country have infrastructure to accommodate the students.

He further indicated that in almost all these schools, the GES has “built enough to cater for the students so they don’t necessarily have to do double-track”.

Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu added that government has also invested a large amount of resources to increase access and improve quality of technical and vocational education.

He stated that infrastructure has been expanded “through the construction of new institutions and upgrading of facilities in existing technical universities as well as technical and vocational institutes.”