{"id":447569,"date":"2025-12-05T08:07:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T08:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2025\/12\/05\/dr-opoku-prempeh-says-free-shs-esp-not-adutwums-legacy\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T08:07:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T08:07:33","slug":"dr-opoku-prempeh-says-free-shs-esp-not-adutwums-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2025\/12\/05\/dr-opoku-prempeh-says-free-shs-esp-not-adutwums-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Opoku Prempeh says Free SHS, ESP not Adutwum&#8217;s legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"article-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.ghanaweb.com\/imagelib\/pics\/294\/29499928.295.jpg\" alt=\"Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh was the Running Mate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2024 elections\" title=\"Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh was the Running Mate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2024 elections\" width=\"295\" height=\"178\" \/> <span class=\"image_caption\"><span>Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh was the Running Mate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2024 elections<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"-webkit-user-select: none; -webkit-touch-callout: none; -moz-user-select: none; -ms-user-select: none; user-select: none;\">\n<p id=\"article-123\">The office of former Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, has issued a strong rebuttal to what it describes as \u201cdeliberate historical distortions\u201d contained in a recent pro-Adutwum publication that sought to credit Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum with major national education reforms.<\/p>\n<p>In a firm statement titled \u201cA Necessary Correction,\u201d Dr Prempeh\u2019s camp accuses Team Adutwum of misrepresenting timelines, appropriating policy achievements, and overlooking the foundational work executed under the first Akufo-Addo administration.<\/p>\n<p><b>ESP 2018\u20132030: \u201cIt is not his strategic plan\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p>A major point of contention is the claim that the Education Strategic Plan (ESP) 2018\u20132030 is Dr Adutwum\u2019s creation.<\/p>\n<p>The rebuttal sharply refutes this, outlining the actual chronology:<\/p>\n<p>Work on the ESP began in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>It was completed and launched for implementation in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The ESP is a sector-wide national development blueprint, developed under Dr Prempeh\u2019s leadership during his tenure from 2017 to 2021.<\/p>\n<p>The statement calls attempts to brand the ESP as a personal achievement of Dr. Adutwum \u201ca clear effort to rewrite Ghana\u2019s educational history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b>Free SHS: The timeline is not up for debate<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Dr Prempeh\u2019s office also takes issue with suggestions that Dr Adutwum played a central role in the rollout of Free Senior High School.<\/p>\n<p>According to the rebuttal:<\/p>\n<p>Free SHS was launched in September 2017.<\/p>\n<p>The first Free SHS cohort completed WASSCE in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Adutwum had not yet been approved by Parliament as Deputy Minister when the budget funding Free SHS was read in March 2017.<\/p>\n<p>The statement underscores that Free SHS was conceptualised, designed, costed, funded and rolled out under Dr Prempeh, making any attempt to reassign credit both misleading and historically inaccurate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExaggeration has limits; Facts do not\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The rebuttal ends with a strong caution against political revisionism, \u201cPolitical campaigns must not distort the contributions of those who delivered these reforms. Ghana\u2019s education history must be told truthfully, without exaggeration or selective memory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The statement stresses that credit for national reforms must be assigned accurately to protect the integrity of the sector\u2019s historical record.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh was the Running Mate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2024 elections The office of former Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, has issued a strong rebuttal to what it describes as \u201cdeliberate historical distortions\u201d contained in a recent pro-Adutwum publication that sought to credit Dr Yaw Osei [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":447561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-447569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - 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