Politicians Are Our Worst Enemies – Adutwum On SHS Education

Former Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, says politicians are becoming their own worst enemies when it comes to handling Senior High School education.

Speaking on Joy News' The Pulse, Dr. Adutwum said politicians often make promises to get elected without fully understanding the system they are coming to manage, and later find themselves in a hole.

He defended the double-track system introduced under the Free SHS policy, arguing that it was not only about access but was backed by several interventions that improved outcomes.

According to him, before Free SHS in 2015 when there was no double track, the pass rates were low – English Language was 45.2%, Integrated Science 28.7%, Mathematics 32.4% and Social Studies 57%.

But when the first batch of double-track students wrote WASSCE in 2020, the results shot up – English to 57.34%, Integrated Science to 52%, Mathematics to 65% and Social Studies to 64%.

By 2023, he said the double-track cohort recorded 73% in English, 66% in Integrated Science, 62% in Mathematics and 76% in Social Studies.

Dr. Adutwum noted that this year's 2026 results have however dropped, and blamed it on a failure to understand and sustain the interventions that made Free SHS work.

He listed a GHS 165 million intervention grant that paid teachers for extra work before and after school, provision of new science labs to 250 schools, training of teachers, creation of STEM schools with equipment and supplies, and hiring of chief examiners to train teachers and Heads of Departments across the country to correct mistakes from previous exams.

He said Free SHS was more than just access, stressing that those underlying interventions were key to the improved performance under the double-track system.