Prez Akufo-Addo says over 5 million students have benefitted Free SHS: True or False? Here is what we know

Moving forward to 2024, both President Akufo-Addo and Education Minister Yaw Osei Adutwum have claimed that the total number of beneficiaries has surpassed 5 million.

In this event, he reiterated the total number of beneficiaries under the Free SHS programme, stating that “5.10 million children have so far benefited from the SHS program since it was instituted in September.”

Yaw Osei Adutwum, could not sing from the same hymn book as they gave varying accounts on the total number of beneficiaries under the programme.

This difference in numbers has raised suspicions regarding the actual total number of beneficiaries under the Free SHS programme, adding to the existing confusion surrounding the reported figures of over 5 million beneficiaries.

Unless the government is using a different calculation method, it is difficult to understand how the total beneficiaries in six years could surpass 5 million when the highest enrolment year only reached 503,000.

In fact, according to data from the Free SHS Secretariat, the total number of enrolments (for both Senior High School and Technical and Vocational Education and Training) from 2017 to the 2021/22 academic year was 2,089,430.https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/QsVvR/1/

So, how did the government arrive at the 5.1 million or 5.7 million total beneficiaries statistics