The Ghana Education Service (GES) has dismissed as false a rumour claiming that senior high schools have been authorised to charge students GH¢1,700 as a feeding fee, insisting that the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) policy remains entirely free for beneficiaries.
In a statement issued by GES management in early May 2026, the Service said it had “not authorised or sanctioned any school to charge fees, under any name or in any form,” from students or parents, and urged the public to disregard the claims as misinformation.
What the rumour claimed
The rumour, which circulated in parts of the media and among sections of the public, alleged that schools had been given the go-ahead to collect a feeding fee of GH¢1,700 from Free SHS students. The claim suggested that families would have to bear part of the cost of feeding their wards in school, contrary to the core promise of the Free SHS policy that tuition, boarding, and feeding are covered by government.
GES did not attribute the claim to a specific individual or organisation in its statement, but described it as being spread by people “seeking to mislead” the public. Reports on the matter did not tie the figure to a particular school, region, or examination cohort, and GES’s rebuttal addressed the claim as a general threat to public confidence in the policy rather than a single verified incident at any named school.
GES’s official response
GES management was unambiguous in rejecting the claim. The Service stated that any school found “charging money under the guise of feeding fees” was “acting unlawfully and without the approval of Management,” and warned that such conduct would be treated as contrary to the national interest.
The statement reaffirmed that “government’s commitment to not only maintain the Free SHS policy, but improve upon it, has not changed.” GES also advised parents and students who are approached for unauthorised feeding payments to report the matter directly to the Service for investigation, rather than pay any amount demanded.
The statement did not name an individual signatory, and was issued in the name of GES management as the governing authority responsible for public pre-tertiary education in Ghana.
How Free SHS feeding is actually funded
Since its introduction in 2017, the Free SHS policy has covered tuition, textbooks, boarding, and feeding for public senior high school students, funded through government subventions rather than parental contributions. Feeding costs for boarding students are met through grants released by government directly to school accounts, meant to cover meals for the length of each term, with schools expected to plan catering around these disbursements rather than seek supplementary payment from parents.
This funding model means that, in principle, no boarding or day student under Free SHS should be asked to pay cash for meals. Where schools have previously faced feeding-related difficulties, these have generally been linked to delays in the release of government grants or logistical bottlenecks in supply, rather than any policy shift requiring parents to pay.
A pattern of shielding parents from exam-period costs
The feeding fee rebuttal follows a broader pattern this year of GES moving to prevent extra costs from falling on parents around the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) period. In April 2026, the Service released GH¢15.8 million to cover WASSCE practical examination costs nationwide, funds paid directly to schools rather than charged to candidates, specifically to ease the financial burden on families during the exam season.
Seen against that backdrop, GES’s dismissal of the GH¢1,700 feeding fee rumour fits a consistent official position: any additional charges linked to Free SHS students, whether for practicals, feeding, or other services, should be covered through government channels and not passed on to parents.
Why it matters
Unverified claims about new charges under Free SHS tend to spread quickly, particularly around examination periods when parents are already anxious about costs. GES’s statement is aimed at closing that gap between rumour and policy, making clear that its feeding arrangements have not changed and that no fee of any amount has been approved for collection from Free SHS beneficiaries.
Parents and students who encounter demands for feeding payments or any other unauthorised charge at their schools have been encouraged to report such cases to GES rather than comply, as the Service says it will investigate and act against schools found to be flouting the policy.