A fervent listener of Joy FM's Super Morning Show is of the view that people who think that the Free Senior High School (SHS) educational policy is meant to score political points are naïve.

Identifying himself as Justice, he said he has no doubt that government is committed to ensuring the successful implementation of the programme. He however acknowledged challenges confronting the implementation of the policy and added his voice to calls for these bottlenecks to be addressed.

Among challenges confronting the free SHS programme that were mentioned by numerous callers into the morning show Wednesday, May 26 are; lack of accommodation facilities resulting in students sleeping on the floor, congestion in classrooms, inconvenience relating to erratic schedules for the double track system, poor quality of food served to students, little attention to end of semester examinations and minimal contact hours.

Justice, therefore, applauded Joy FM for bringing up the issue for discussion in order to find workable solutions to the the challenges raised.

Another caller, George, said his major concern is how long students on either the Gold Track or Green Track stay at home when a semester is over.

He stated that if he could afford home tutoring services, he would have done so in order for his child to maintain a good academic performance in school.

"How is it that, people are willing to pay for the education of their students and they have the money to pay. And yet, we took the responsibility from them when we know very well that we don’t have the resources to cater for that," Issah, another worried caller said.

For Vincent who is a teacher, "the situation on the ground at the various schools is alarming".

He said that the limited contact hours they have with the students is affecting teaching and learning, as well as increasing the pregnancy rate among students since they stay at home for so many months.

Sharing a story of a colleague whose ward is in Form 2 and enrolled in the Gold Track, Abdul, who also phoned into the programme, said prior to the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, his friend's child had been in school for barely three months. "And up till now, he has not written any exams," he said.

Abdul said, "It seems the Gold track has been short-changed. And when it was time for them to go back to school, they didn’t start with the Gold track. They started with the Green track."

The Free SHS educational policy was initiated by the administration of President Akufo-Addo in his first term in power.

The purpose of the policy was to reduce poverty and to increase the literacy rate among the youth in the country.

The double-track system was introduced to enable the various senior high schools in the country to admit more students so that all eligible students have access to education.