Former spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, Yaw Opoku Mensah, has pushed back strongly against claims by the Minister for Education, Haruna Iddrisu, that the Free Senior High School policy was rolled out without the necessary infrastructure to absorb the surge in enrolment.

In a detailed response, Mr Opoku Mensah argued that the record of the previous administration demonstrates significant investment in classroom infrastructure to support the policy.

According to him, national self-respect requires respectable leadership, national pride demands leaders of integrity, and national redemption depends on dedicated leadership — values he said were demonstrated by the leadership that implemented the programme.

He commended former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, together with former Education Ministers Matthew Opoku Prempeh and Yaw Osei Adutwum, for what he described as a deliberate effort to expand access to secondary education through both policy and infrastructure.

Mr Opoku Mensah presented figures he said illustrate the scale of classroom expansion at the Senior High School level over an eight-year period under the New Patriotic Party government.

According to the data, a total of 4,699 classrooms were constructed through a mix of three-unit, six-unit, twelve-unit, eighteen-unit and twenty-four-unit classroom blocks across the country.

He contrasted this with the eight-year period under former Presidents John Evans Atta Mills and John Dramani Mahama, during which 29 Community Day Senior High Schools were built, amounting to 696 classrooms.

Using an average class size of 40 students, Mr Opoku Mensah argued that the classrooms constructed under the Akufo-Addo administration alone created space for approximately 187,960 additional students, compared with an estimated 27,840 students who could be accommodated in the 696 classrooms built during the Mills Mahama era.

He further stressed that the figures cited relate strictly to classroom blocks and do not include additional infrastructure such as dormitory facilities, newly established schools, STEM institutions, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) facilities, and other expansion projects undertaken during the period.

Mr Opoku Mensah maintained that when the full scope of investments is considered, the claim that Free SHS was implemented without expanding infrastructure does not reflect the scale of projects undertaken to support the programme.

His response follows remarks by Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu suggesting that although the Free SHS policy significantly increased enrolment, the previous government failed to sufficiently expand infrastructure to match the growing number of students entering the country’s secondary school system.