Free SHS quality declined under Adutwum’s watch– Bempah Tandoh

Former Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Dr. Kwabena Bempah Tandoh, has criticised the leadership approach of former Education Minister Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, claiming it weakened the effective implementation of the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) policy.

Speaking on Channel One TV’s Face to Face with Umaru Sanda Amadu on Tuesday, September 9, Dr. Tandoh argued that Dr. Adutwum often sidelined education professionals and relied too heavily on his own expertise.

“As a minister of education, regardless of what you know, you work with the technical people on the ground. The biggest challenge was that because he felt he was in education, he could do it.”

Dr. Tandoh contrasted Dr. Adutwum’s style with that of his predecessor, Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, who he said regularly involved technical experts in decision-making. He noted that this collaborative approach was missing under Dr. Adutwum’s tenure.

“Post Dr Mathew Opoku-Prempeh, that camaraderie of bringing everybody together was absent. And unfortunately, that impacted Free SHS and its quality that we saw in the first term of Akufo-Addo’s administration. Sometimes we were not even invited to boardroom meetings. The technical skills were not leveraged,” he stated.

The Free SHS policy, launched in 2017, was a flagship initiative of the Akufo-Addo administration.

While it expanded access to secondary education, critics have raised concerns about quality, logistics, and sustainability issues Dr. Tandoh suggests were exacerbated by leadership choices at the Ministry of Education.