The Volta Region Free Senior High School (SHS) Coordinator, Madam Fedelia Dorleku, says the free high school educational system after the School Placement Exercise has seen the admission of 47,690 new students successfully placed.
Madam Dorleku explained that the 2022 placement figure of 47,690 admitted students was higher than the 2021 number of 43,000.
This development, she described as positive, and must be supported by all to enable the government achieve the target of ensuring that all children attain secondary education.
Addressing a press conference at the capital, Ho, the Free SHS Regional Coordinator said the admission system was smooth, and the students effectively placed in their respective schools.
She also noted that the only challenge was that some of the admitted students had not report at their respective institutions as yet.
She explained that the role of parents was to visit the schools to ensure that their wards were admitted and could go back and prepare for them to come to the school later.
The Coordinator said her outfit had been educating parents on the school selection, because most parents did not understand, for example, why they chose schools in their localities for their wards to be in the boarding house, but were admitted to the same institutions as day students.
Madam Dorleku observed that the free SHS system had proven to be one of the best education policies in the country and the sub-region, stressing that even though there were initial challenges during the implementation process, the government had identified the problems and was addressing them gradually.
She noted that the government was streamlining the free SHS implementation, and the double track system had been removed in the 2022 academic year, as Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) institutions were being strengthened to provide skills training that would be relevant to national development.
Madam Dorleku further explained that the enhanced educational system sought to promote TVET as a strategy that would ensure that students who could not go through the normal academic educational system at the SHS level would learn skills that would enable them to establish their own businesses and create jobs.
