CSPS Seminar on " Is Ghana's Free SHS Program-Free for All?"

This paper seeks to assess the extent to which Ghana's free Senior High School (SHS) policy has coincided with an increase in SHS attainment. The paper also examines how participation in SHS has improved since the introduction of the policy by sex and consumption quintiles. The paper uses data from the Ghana Living Standards Surveys (GLSS) 2012, 2017 and from the Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey (2022). The results suggest that there has been a surge in enrollment at the SHS level since the introduction of the policy in 2017. Participation for females in the poorest two quintiles has increased by 1.6 and 12.8 percentage points, respectively, between 2012 and 2022 while for males the poorest consumption quintile has benefited the most during this period with an increase in 6.57 percentage points. Overall, spending on SHS is relatively equitable, while spending on primary and JHS is more pro-poor.