Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, Minister for Education, says students benefiting from the Free Senior High School policy must appreciate the importance of the policy to make the best out of it.
“Don’t take the efforts of the government for granted.
If you take the free senior high school policy for granted you will not make the best use of it,” the Minister told students of Ejisuman Senior High School during a working visit to the school.
The Education Minister, who was teaching one of the science classes of the school during his visit said, “People think the policy is normal but there is nothing normal about free education because it was never this way.
During our time, if anybody had told us that a day would come that we would go to school for free, we would have said no way because we had other fees to pay in addition to boarding fees,” he stated.
He recounted how students had to pay fees and go for chits signed by the bursar before they could access the dining hall.
“Some of you have taken things for granted.
You don’t even know what the government has done for you, but some couldn’t have reported to school if not for the fact that it is free,” he pointed out.
He added: “If you were to pay GHC 5,000.00 every semester after buying all your school needs, some of you wouldn’t been here.”
The Minister, therefore, admonished the students to appreciate the intervention and work hard to justify the investment being made in them by the Government of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
He entreated them to shun all forms of negative tendencies that could derail their academic progression.
“There are some of you who are going to spend so much of your time gossiping and doing some other things that you are not supposed to do at this age, getting distracted by boys, and girls and not focusing on your future,” the Minister bemoaned.
He advised the students not to be discouraged by the environment they found themselves in because they did not attend any of the big schools they fancied, saying getting good grades depended on themselves irrespective of where they were.