Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government's flagship Free Senior High School (FSHS) has significantly increased female enrolment for secondary education in the country.

In a media interview on Monday, October 12, Dr. Bawumia explained that the introduction of the Free SHS policy had ended a disturbing trend, which saw the education of many females from poor families being truncated in favour of sponsoring a male child due to lack of funding.

The introduction of the Free SHS, Dr Bawumia indicated, had solved many social problems including the improvement in female enrollment at the secondary school level.

"Prior to the introduction of Free SHS, there was this situation of families who couldn't afford to pay fees of all their children and normally sacrificing the females in order to mobilise money and concentrate on the male child.

"This situation left the girls behind and many of them ended up as 'house girls'. It was all because parents could not afford to pay all children and the family would decide to sponsor the male and drop the female," the Vice President observed.

The Vice President said the policy was well thought out by President Akufo-Addo, who instituted it to give all children free access to secondary education to alleviate the suffering of parents.

"President Akufo-Addo is a compassionate leader and the Free SHS policy was meant to build an educated population by giving all children from every part of the country, regardless of the social and economic status of their parents, free access to secondary education," he emphasised.

The policy, he said, had resolved many problems such as lifting the financial burden off parents and improving the enrollment of female students.

"Now people find it difficult to get young girls to be their house girls." Dr Bawumia added.