SHSs female students forced to stay with boyfriends due to no boarding facilities. This is puting girls in secondary school at serious risk.
The latest negative effect of the rushed Free SHS implementation, without the needed boarding facilities to accommodate students, has been cited as the reason why some female students have chosen to stay with boyfriends and commute to school.
This was disclosed by the headmistress of Chemu Senior High School, a school in Tema, Accra, Ghana. According to the worried headmistress, the lack of critical basic infrastructure in the school is the cause of this worrying development.
Speaking on the issue during a media engagement, Madam Vicentia Annin-Agyei revealed that because the school does not have enough facilities to accommodate the learners, female students in particular, who rent homes in nearby areas, have to go through the stress of living outside the school and commuting daily.
“Coming and commuting from home, some of our students are forced to look for homes nearby and rent just to be able to come to school. This also poses another challenge,” she stated. She was quick to add that because of the situation, some learners are compelled to stay with their boyfriends so that their accommodation needs can be taken care of. “Some of them are even living with their boyfriends and girlfriends. We have that challenge,” the already worried headmistress added.
In her view, the students did not intend to find themselves in the current worrying situation, but the current circumstances have forced them to use these alternative means. “Some are forced into that situation, not that they intended to be in that situation, but the situation has called for that,” she added.
According to her, Chemu Senior High School is going through a lot of challenges as a result of the lack of urgently needed accommodation and other infrastructure.
“As a transitional school, when we say transitional, it means that the whole year group is not in school at the same time,” she said. “There is always one year group out and two year groups in. It is transitional because the facilities we have are not enough to cater for all our students,” she explained.
She suggested that there is a need for urgent solutions that will deal with the infrastructure issues, which would help alleviate the challenges faced by students.
“We would urge that we address these issues first so that at least we can curb some of these challenges,” Mrs. Annin-Agyei concluded.
Ghana’s public second cycle schools faced serious infrastructure problems from October 2017, when the then government, led by former President Nana Addo, introduced the historic Free SHS policy, which allowed Ghanaian youth to access secondary education without any form of fee payment. The policy was rolled out when the government had not put in place enough infrastructure to accommodate the huge numbers. The free nature of the policy and the removal of cut-off points meant the number of students enrolled nearly doubled, putting great pressure on the available infrastructure in all schools.
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In 2024, a new government won the general election and promised to face the many bottlenecks hindering the successful implementation of the Free SHS. Until the accommodation challenges are dealt with, the current situation where SHS female students are forced to stay with boyfriends will persist.