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Goodness In Fee-Free Education But Devil In Poverty: Why A Review Of Free SHS Should Focus On Protecting The Poor

Introduction

Poverty has been one of the primary reasons behind the introduction of Cost-Elimination policies, popularly called fee-free education at various levels of education. Citizens of the global South, including Ghana, admire the idea of enrolling in school, at least at the high school level.

The recent surge of enrolment figures in Ghana at the high school level after introducing the Free Senior High School policy (Free SHS) in 2017 attests to these facts. Furthermore, studies using data from across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a region with the lowest rate of school enrolment at the high school level, show that the introduction of fee-free policies positively impacts enrolment rate relative to the pre-policies era.
the impact on enrolment may decline.