A debate is raging in the country on whether secondary education should be made free or not, following campaign promises by some political parties (notably the NPP, CPP and PPP) to introduce free secondary education if elected in the December polls. First, it is important to note that the word “free” as used by the politicians is misleading. What they are proposing to do is to use our collective taxes to fund boarding and facility use cost at the secondary school level. So, it won’t be free, all of us will be paying for it through our taxes. There is no doubt that secondary level of education is a critical stage of our educational system deserving top most attention, but a blanket policy to make education at that level free is a misplaced priority. The best argument put forward by the proponents of this policy is that it will afford all qualified children, whether poor or rich, the opportunity to undergo secondary education. In other words, the policy is intended to address lack of funding as a barrier to accessing second cycle education – this is not a bad idea entirely. But, the big question is how many qualified candidates are denied access to second cycle education due to lack of funding and is that number significant enough to merit the free SHS education policy? Another justification that has been provided for the free second cycle education policy is the fact that it would indirectly put money in the pockets of parents and guardians. This is also not entirely wrong. However, apart from the wisdom in the saying that, there is no free lunch, a legitimate question to ask is whether the policy would be funded from non-tax money or from taxes collected from parents. Besides, would the policy cater for other bills (such as transportation to school, school materials, hospital bills) of children in second cycle schools? Proponents of the free SHS education policy also make the argument that, the policy would help reduce the school dropout rate at the secondary level. Well, this sounds speculative, because they have not told us the number of the dropout rate at the secondary level is due to lack of funding. In fact, the proposed free SHS education policy is problematic and not well thought through. It is a misplaced priority which is not supported by basic facts on the ground. First, available statistics show that over fifty percent of candidates who qualified to enter SHS in the 2011 academic year were denied access due to limited facilities at the existing second cycle institutions, and this has been the trend over the years. This means that the real problem is that there are limited number of second cycle schools and their facilities. Therefore, instead of the free secondary education policy, more second cycle schools should be built, and facilities of existing schools expanded to create access to a lot more children. Second, in an era where teachers complain of poor conditions of service, it is ill-informed to introduce a policy that would compound an already bad situation. The limited resources should rather be used to motivate teachers and provide the needed teaching and learning materials that would promote effective and efficient academic work in our second cycle schools. Besides, the free SHS policy, though intended to benefit the poor in society would actually benefit everybody - including those who can afford to fund their wards education. An effective way of addressing the needs of the poor in society is to introduce scholarship schemes to sponsor promising candidates from poor background to pursue secondary education. It is perfectly right for us as a nation to bring education closer to the door step of everybody in the country, but the free secondary education policy is a populist attempt by some politicians to win votes from unsuspecting electorate. No country in the world has a blanket policy to absorb parental responsibility to fund their wards’ education, not even a super-high GDP country like the US. As a developing country, we should direct our limited resources on ventures that would yield the maximum results and not pursue policies like the free SHS education policy.