Flagbearer of the largest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, as part of his campaign message ahead of the December 2024 elections, affirmed that the government of the Ghana, of which he will be president, will give top priority to resolving the issues surrounding the implementation of the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy brought by the NPP government.

In a crunch meeting with the various Teacher unions comprising of the Ghana National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers Ghana(CCTC Gh), the former President maintained that, the free SHS policy ought to be reviewed amidst its numerous challenges and implantation hiccups.

His standpoint comes in response to the increasing apprehensions regarding the execution and funding of the policy.

According to John Mahama, there is a need to have a stakeholder engagement with the implementation of the free Senior High School educational policy programme, adding that in his tenure, he would hold a stakeholder forum on education in his first 100 days to solicit inputs on how to improve and deliver quality education.

He said, “within the first 100 days of me becoming president, we will hold a stakeholder dialogue on education. It will have as part of its focus the implementational bottlenecks of the Free SHS, but it is also going to deal with how we can improve financing and teaching and learning at the basic school level and so at that stakeholder’s engagement, NAGRAT, GNAT, parents, students, educational experts, everybody is going to be there and we are going to have a discussion on access, on equity, on affordability, and on financing our educational system.”