education minister matthew opoku
Dr Mathew Opoku-Prempeh

The Education Minister says a total of 236 out of 822 Senior High School (SHS) projects started by the government have been completed.

Dr Mathew Opoku-Prempeh, addressing journalists at a briefing Tuesday, said the other 586 projects are currently at various stages of completion across the 16 regions.

The Manhyia Member of Parliament said completion of all the projects will promote quality and equitable access to education across the country.

“The provision of full infrastructure is one of the ways to improve access to education. Therefore, the Ministry of Education awarded 822 contracts for various infrastructure projects to improve access to Secondary level education,” he said.

The move, according to the Minister, will end the Double Track System brought about after the implementation of the free SHS policy in 2017.

Regarding the distribution of the projects across the country, Dr Opoku-Prempeh said the contracts have been evenly distributed to achieve government’s objective of making education accessible and free to all.

Government rolled out the double-track system in the 2018/19 academic year as a measure to address congestion in second cycle schools following the implementation of the free SHS programme.

The system runs under the green and gold tracks where students will be in school for three months within any given period.

According to him, the intervention was to temporarily address the infrastructure challenges whilst government constructs more schools nationwide.