The Akufo-Addo administration has provided detailed breakdown on its flagship program Free SHS following concerns regarding discrepancies in the reported number of beneficiaries from 2017 to 2024.
This comes after various fact-checking reports challenged the claim that 5.7 million students had benefited from the policy.
Former Spokesperson at the Ministry of Education Kwasi Kwarteng addressed the issue in a social media post on Thursday, January 30, 2025. He explained that the confusion arose due to a financial accounting technique employed by the Ministry of Finance. According to him, the Ministry used a cumulative budgeting approach, which led to students being counted multiple times over their three-year stay in senior high school.
“For financial reporting purposes, the Ministry uses a cumulative budgeting approach instead of relying on nominal yearly enrollment figures. This method results in counting each student as a separate beneficiary for every year they remain in school. Consequently, a student would be counted three separate times over their three-year period in Senior High School,” Mr. Kwarteng explained.
The Ministry of Finance’s official data, as presented in the 2024 Mid-Year Budget Review, indicates that the total number of first-year enrollments under the Free SHS program from 2017 to 2024 stands at 3,135,754. This figure is significantly lower than the 5.7 million that had been widely quoted by the previous government. The yearly breakdown of first-year enrollments, according to the Ministry of Finance, is as follows: 362,118 students enrolled in the 2017/2018 academic year, 432,791 in 2018/2019, 404,851 in 2019/2020, 423,320 in 2020/2021, 555,353 in 2021/2022, 447,396 in 2022/2023, and 509,925 in 2023/2024.
Mr. Kwarteng further clarified that based on annual enrollment figures available at the Free SHS Secretariat, the accurate total number of unique beneficiaries of the program from 2017 to 2024 stands at 3,511,733. This figure, he emphasized, aligns with official data from the Ministry of Education and represents the actual number of students who have benefited from Free SHS at least once during the seven years.
The issue of inflated beneficiary figures had previously been flagged by fact-checking organizations, including Fact-Check Ghana, which published a report in December 2024 indicating that the 5.7 million claim was inaccurate. According to their findings, the number of beneficiaries had been overstated by 2,564,246 students, a discrepancy that raised questions about the government's reporting methodology. The opposition had also seized on the issue, using it as an example of alleged misinformation by the Akufo-Addo administration.
However, Mr. Kwarteng insisted that while the methodology used by the Ministry of Finance may have contributed to misunderstandings, it was not intended to mislead the public. He explained that this accounting technique first appeared in the 2024 Budget Statement and was later repeated in ex-President Nana Akufo-Addo’s final State of the Nation Address. The goal, he said, was to capture the financial implications of the program, rather than the exact number of unique students who had benefited.
Despite the clarification, the debate over the figures has sparked renewed discussions on education financing, transparency, and the sustainability of Free SHS. Critics argue that accurate data is crucial for evaluating the success and impact of the policy, while supporters of the program maintain that the focus should be on ensuring access to quality education for all Ghanaian children.
Mr. Kwarteng, in his concluding remarks, urged that the discussion shift away from disputes over numbers and instead focus on ways to improve and expand the Free SHS program. “While clarifying this issue is essential, it is equally important to focus on ensuring that more Ghanaian children benefit from quality education. That is where the discussion must move going forward,” he stated.
