President John Dramani Mahama has assured that majority\u00a0of the 200 Day Senior High Schools project would\u00a0be completed before the November general elections.<\/p>\n
Although he admitted that his administration may not be able to complete all the 200 the NDC promised in the 2012 electioneering campaign, he was certain that 123 will be ready soon.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”1jNOEKsdEpa8c5TRfg0IYWKnQ4iuJ5aV”]Speaking on TV3 on Monday, President Mahama said the schools will be put to judicious use after they are completed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are ten ready, the Ministry of Education has to set the date [for the inauguration]. We are building 123 as at now at various stages of completion. Some of them the sites have been handed over, they\u2019ve started the profiling, but the early ones that we started, many of them are in advanced stages of completion.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo although we promised 200, we have 123 ongoing, many of them will be ready before elections. We are not waiting to finish all before we populate the schools and so as we are finishing the schools and we are handing over to the Ministry of Education, we are putting the children to school,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
In March 2014, President Mahama cut the sod for the construction of the first 50 schools, as part of a total of 200 new Community Day\u00a0Senior High Schools to be built across the\u00a0country.<\/p>\n
The new schools were to be built as part of government\u2019s commitment to improving access to secondary education and to help implement government\u2019s progressive free senior high school policy.<\/p>\n
Government has so far fully completed only four.<\/p>\n
President Mahama at the time explained that: \u201cexisting secondary schools have a capacity to absorb only 60% of the students who qualify from Junior High\u00a0School. Because of the high demand for secondary education, existing schools have been compelled to admit\u00a0much higher than they were designed to accommodate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has led to\u00a0circumstances in which there are some schools with as many as 3,000 students, twice the prescribed\u00a0average of 1,500.\u201d<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
By: Godwin A. Allotey\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n