He said of the projects initiated, 492 have been completed, with the rest at various stages of completion.
Speaking at the Nation Building Updates in Accra on Tuesday 13th October 2020 on the theme "Investing in Education, investing in the Future", he said of the 1,011 projects, 843 were initiated by the government through GETFund (of which 382 had been completed), 135 were initiated by the World Bank-funded Secondary Education Infrastructure Project (SEIP), of which 107 have been completed, and 33 by the Kuwaiti Fund, of which 3 have been completed.
The completed projects include 3, 6, 8, 12, and 18-unit classroom blocks, amounting to the creation of 84,600 new seats arising out of 222 new classroom blocks.
Other projects he stated include washroom facilities, rehabilitation works, and structures such as assembly halls and laboratories.
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Giving the background to this, he said the Free Senior High School Programme has been accompanied by high demand for certain schools due to the school choice system adding that to ensure that no child is denied access to education, the government has invested in infrastructure to accommodate the extra numbers.
In the 2018/19 school year, for instance, the number of Junior High School graduates that enrolled in SHS exceeded the number that enrolled in the 2017/18 school year by 30.7%, he stated.
According to him, the gap analysis showed that the government had to create extra 181,993 spaces in SHS to accommodate increased numbers of numbers, especially in elite SHS.
He pointed out that as more children gain access to education, there is the need to invest in infrastructure at all levels in order to ensure a conducive learning environment prevails for quality outcomes.