Prior to 2020 when free WASSCE was introduced, less than 1% of final year students defaulted in paying their WASSCE fees.

Today’s WASSCE fees is about GHC 400 per public candidate. That’s about GHC 140 cedis a year, should parents decide to pay small small till final year.

If GoG is struggling to finance Free SHS with severe liquidity constraints, why add another GHC 170 million free WASSCE fees for both rich and poor only to ‘cripple’ WAEC?

Today, WAEC cannot produce 2024 WASSCE results because of over GHC 100 million GoG debt they require payment to buy marking equipment.

Source: WAEC

Since 2020, there has been no single year where WASSCE debt owed WAEC hasn’t become a public issue. This was not the case before.

Fact is, the more government continues to owe WAEC, the more WAEC’s capacity to invest in credible examinations is weakened.

We must ask ourselves:

Must everything be free for ALL just because a tiny fraction can’t afford? What happened to targeting?

Must everything be free for ALL even when you don’t have the means?

Then why not add free transport fees for all day students, since over 200k SHS students are day, spending cash on transport daily?

BECE makes sense, since governmet pays for only public basic school children. However, the regular delayed payment is again problematic.

If we had the cash to spend without limits, no one would be making noise here; but not when we simply don’t.

This is supposed to be a very basic Social Policy principle…but when you talk p3, you are an enemy of free SHS.