The Conference of Heads of Private Secondary Schools (CHOPSS) has said more private secondary schools are available for government to include those schools into the Free SHS policy.
The Government in July 2025 extended its Free Senior High School (SHS) policy to initially cover 60 approved private secondary schools across all 16 regions as part of a pilot integration program.
This inclusion was to help reduce congestion in public SHSs and ensure that more students can benefit from quality education, regardless of whether they attend public or private institutions.
Head of Communications for CHOPSS, Kyei Baffour, in an interview on TV3’s Daily Brief, Monday, August 31 said the decision has so far been beneficial as some schools had previously been left underutilised.
He noted, however, that several private schools still have unused facilities that could be leveraged to support the education system.
“It has been helpful. At least, we have made fruitful use of the facilities of these private schools which were left unused,” he said.
“We still have more private schools still on standby, ready to absorb the rest of the students,” he added.
He said the continued availability of these facilities presents an opportunity for government to address secondary schools capacity challenges without necessarily having to immediately construct new infrastructure.
Mr Baffour therefore appealed to government to consider expanding its collaboration with private secondary schools.
“We still call on government that since these facilities exist, we can leverage on these facilities and absorb them,” he said.
