The government has so far spent GH¢917 million to support students under the No-Fees-Stress Policy, the Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, has revealed.

He said the money, which covered 321,807 students, was paid from budgetary support from the Consolidated Fund.

The GH¢917 million is a direct flow from the Ministry of Finance from the Consolidated Fund as part of the Ministry of Education’s budgetary support. Other releases have gone to the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF) from the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) for the students loan disbursement," he said.

Mr Iddrisu said this yesterday at a Stakeholder Engagement on the Implementation of the No-Fees-Stress Initiative at Dawu in the Eastern Region.

The programme, organised by the SLTF, is on the theme: "Strengthening No-Fees-Stress Implementation through Institutional Partnerships for Inclusive, Equitable and Sustainable Student Financing".

It is being attended by representatives of Vice-Chancellors Ghana, Vice-Chancellors of Technical Universities, Principals of Colleges of Education, Federation of Ghana Medical Students, civil society organisations (CSOs) and the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education.

Mr Iddrisu said in the 2024 National Democratic Congress Resetting Ghana Manifesto, President John Mahama committed to reducing the financial burden of tertiary education students and their families.

In pursuit of that, he said on July 4, 2025, that commitment was translated into action with the launch of the No-Fees-Stress Initiative, implemented by the SLTF and adequately funded by the GetFund.

"Let me commend the management and leadership of the Students Loan Trust Fund, and the leadership and management of GetFund, for keeping this dream a reality under President Mahama's Reset.

"Arguably, and statistically, GH¢917 million has so far been spent to support students under the No-Fee-Stress, covering a student population of 321,807 students," he emphasised.

He admitted that one of the major challenges of the No-Fee-Stress Policy had to do with timely releases of budgetary allocation for its implementation.

He, therefore, stressed the need to ensure the timely release of funds in order not to defeat the purpose of the initiative.

"So regardless of your financial standing, regardless of your geographical location, regardless of the status of your parents, an eligible Ghanaian who qualifies to access higher education must be supported by government to access higher education," he said.

He indicated that the No-Fees-Stress Policy had come to stay.

Mr Iddrisu said the government had opened up the student loan trust support to students studying Law for the first time in many years and demystified legal education.

"We will do the same for medical education in the coming years.

As a true value of human capital development, maybe we should now accept that human capital development be construed as a strategic investment requirement of every government and sufficient budgetary allocation provided for it," he said.

Presenting an update on the No-Fees-Stress Policy, the Chief Executive Officer of the SLTF, Dr Saajida Shiraz, said the fund was a statutory agency under the Ministry of Education with a mandate to provide financial resources for the benefit of tertiary students and in the last one-and-a-half years, "we are contending with what we describe as an expanded mandate to the introduction of the government's flagship No-Fees-Stress Policy, which is a transformational initiative by President John Dramani Mahama to ensure that financial circumstance would not become a barrier to accessing tertiary education for any Ghanaian student".

The No-Fees-Stress Policy, she said, had five sub-components --- no academic fee policy, the free tertiary education for persons with disabilities, students loan plus initiative, enhanced traditional loan scheme with higher loan amounts and reduced interest rates, and digitalisation of the system to make it easier to access loans.

"So for this academic year, we came up with a very creative financing model to deal with the urgent funding needs of students now trying to access special education, and it is that funding we are calling bridge funding," she said.

The Board Chairperson of the SLTF, Cynthia Amerley Amarteifio, said under the reset agenda of the President, access, inclusion, affordability and sustainability to tertiary education had been placed at the centre of the government’s education agenda.