More Private Schools Ready to Absorb Free SHS Students
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More Private Schools Ready to Absorb Free SHS Students – CHOPSS
Ghana’s private secondary schools say they still have room to take on more students under the Free SHS policy and they’re urging government to make use of it.
The Conference of Heads of Private Secondary Schools (CHOPSS) says a good number of private schools remain available for government to bring into the programme.
This isn’t entirely new territory. Back in July 2025, government extended its Free Senior High School (SHS) policy to cover 60 approved private secondary schools spread across all 16 regions, as part of a pilot integration programme.
The idea behind it was straightforward: ease congestion in public SHSs while making sure more students could access quality education, whether they ended up in a public or private classroom.
Speaking on TV3’s Daily Brief on Monday, August 31, CHOPSS Head of Communications Kyei Baffour said the pilot has delivered real benefits so far. Several private schools that once sat underused now have students filling their classrooms.
It has been helpful. At least, we have made fruitful use of the facilities of these private schools which were left unused, he said.
But he was quick to point out that this is only part of the story. According to Baffour, plenty of private schools still have unused capacity sitting idle space that could be put to work right now.
We still have more private schools still on standby, ready to absorb the rest of the students, he added.
Baffour framed this as a practical opportunity for government. Rather than pouring money and time into constructing brand-new infrastructure to solve capacity challenges, he argued, these existing private-school facilities offer a faster route to the same outcome.
His message to government was simple: lean into what’s already there. We still call on government that since these facilities exist, we can leverage on these facilities and absorb them, he said.
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