The government has spent GH¢917 million to support 321,807 students under the No-Fees-Stress Policy, Minister of Education Haruna Iddrisu has disclosed.
According to the Minister, the funds were provided through budgetary support from the Consolidated Fund to help eligible students meet the cost of tertiary education.
“The GH¢917 million is a direct flow from the Ministry of Finance from the Consolidated Fund as part of the Ministry of Education’s budgetary support,” he said.
Mr Iddrisu disclosed this at a stakeholder engagement on the implementation of the No-Fees-Stress Initiative held at Dawu in the Eastern Region.
The event, organised by the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF), was held on the theme: “Strengthening No-Fees-Stress Implementation through Institutional Partnerships for Inclusive, Equitable and Sustainable Student Financing.”
The engagement brought together representatives from Vice-Chancellors Ghana, technical universities, colleges of education, the Federation of Ghana Medical Students, civil society organisations and Parliament’s Select Committee on Education.
Policy seeks to reduce financial barriers
Mr Iddrisu said the No-Fees-Stress Policy was introduced as part of the government’s commitment under the 2024 National Democratic Congress (NDC) Resetting Ghana manifesto to reduce the financial burden of tertiary education on students and their families.
He said the commitment was translated into action on July 4, 2025, with the launch of the No-Fees-Stress Initiative, implemented by the SLTF with funding support from the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund).
The Minister commended the leadership of the SLTF and GETFund for supporting the implementation of the initiative.
“Arguably, and statistically, GH¢917 million has so far been spent to support students under the No-Fees-Stress, covering a student population of 321,807 students,” he said.
He, however, identified delays in the release of funds as one of the major challenges affecting the implementation of the policy.
Mr Iddrisu stressed the need for government funding to be released on time to ensure that financial constraints do not undermine the objectives of the initiative.
“So regardless of your financial standing, regardless of your geographical location, regardless of the status of your parents, an eligible Ghanaian who qualifies to access higher education must be supported by government to access higher education,” he said.
He maintained that the No-Fees-Stress Policy was a long-term initiative that had come to stay.
Support extended to law students
The Minister also disclosed that the government had, for the first time in several years, opened student loan support to students studying Law.
He said the move was intended to make legal education more accessible and that similar support would be extended to medical education in the coming years.
“We will do the same for medical education in the coming years,” he said.
Mr Iddrisu called for human capital development to be treated as a strategic national investment, with governments allocating adequate resources to education.
“As a true value of human capital development, maybe we should now accept that human capital development be construed as a strategic investment requirement of every government and sufficient budgetary allocation provided for it,” he said.
Five components of No-Fees-Stress Policy
Giving an update on the implementation of the policy, the Chief Executive Officer of the SLTF, Dr Saajida Shiraz, said the Fund had been operating under an expanded mandate following the introduction of the No-Fees-Stress initiative.
She said the policy was designed to ensure that financial circumstances did not prevent eligible Ghanaian students from accessing tertiary education.
According to Dr Shiraz, the initiative has five main components: the no-academic-fee policy, free tertiary education for persons with disabilities, the Students Loan Plus initiative, an enhanced traditional loan scheme with higher loan amounts and reduced interest rates, and the digitalisation of the loan application system.
She said the SLTF had also introduced a financing mechanism known as “bridge funding” to address urgent financial needs of students seeking to access special education during the current academic year.
“For this academic year, we came up with a very creative financing model to deal with the urgent funding needs of students now trying to access special education, and it is that funding we are calling bridge funding,” she said.
Access and affordability remain priorities
The Board Chairperson of the SLTF, Cynthia Amerley Amarteifio, said access, inclusion, affordability and sustainability had been placed at the centre of the government’s tertiary education agenda under the Reset Agenda.
She said the policy was intended to strengthen financial support for students while expanding access to higher education regardless of their economic circumstances.
