The Minority in Parliament is urging the government to immediately discontinue the double track system introduced at the Senior High School level.
It said the system is having negative consequences on the Free Senior High School program and also leading to teenage pregnancy among female students.
The caucus said that based on recent figures from the Ghana Education Service, more than 1,400 female students got pregnant in the year 2018 and 2019 and this could be attributed to the double-track system.
The Ranking Member on Education, Peter Nortsue Kotoe said the Minority is convinced that phasing out the double-track system will reduce the incidence of teenage pregnancy in secondary schools.
“From the Ghana Education Service, Girl Child Education Unit, they published the figures but they did not attribute it to any reason. We have interacted with a number of managers of our SHS, workers in the sector and we have come to the conclusion that this double track system is largely responsible. If you look at the way the students are being placed, far away from their homes and not even given boarding facilities and parents have to look for accommodation to them before they can attend schoo, these are the things that we looked at critically to convince ourselves that for the SHS to be successful, we need to phase it out,” he said.
Mr. Nortsu-Kotoe who addressed a press conference in Parliament earlier this week said the quality of food being fed beneficiaries of the government’s Free Senior High Schools and unavailability of textbooks for students were among the challenges confronting secondary education in the country that required urgent government action.
