1 Free Senior High Policy: Implications to Education Access Equity in Ghana Dr. Adwoa Kwegyiriba Acting Librarian, Takoradi Technical University, Takoradi, Ghana Senior Lecturer, Centre for Languages and Liberal Studies, Takoradi Technical University, Takoradi, Ghana Email: dradwoakwegyiriba1@gmail.com Ronald Osei Mensah Assistant Lecturer, Centre for Languages and Liberal Studies, Social Development Section, Takoradi Technical University, Takoradi, Ghana PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Cape Coast, Ghana Email: ronald.mensah@ttu.edu.gh Abstract Equity in education is when every student receives the resources needed to acquire the basic work skills of reading, writing, and basic arithmetic. While Ghana has achieved near universal access to primary and lower secondary education, the gross enrollment rate in higher secondary education was below 45 percent in 2014, with large disparities in access. In the year 2017, the government of Ghana implemented a free SHS policy on a free access to secondary education for all. This research sought to investigate the implications of the free senior high school policy to educational access and equity in secondary education in Ghana. The document analysis approach was adopted for this study. The findings revealed that the free SHS policy has really increased enrollment figures in secondary schools’ attendance. The researcher recommended that parents, teachers, school administrators, policy analysts and relevant stakeholders have the responsibility to offer alternative proposals and do so in a manner that is constructive and helpful to the policy discourse. Keywords: Access, education, enrolment, equality, equity, free senior high school, quality Introduction Equity in education is when every student receives the resources needed to acquire the basic work skills of reading, writing, and simple arithmetic. It measures educational success in society by its outcome, not the resources poured into it, and speeds up economic growth. Educational inequity slows economic growth of every country (Amadeo & Boyle, 2021). The overall goal of the Ministry of Education is to provide quality education for all Ghanaians, including the underprivileged to enable them acquire relevant skills which will make them functionally productive (Mensah, 2020). The sure way to fight poverty in the country is through education (Ghanaian Times, Monday, August 2, 2021 pg. 16). For years, equity of access in education has referred to the ability of all students to receive an education from qualified teachers in buildings that are safe and conducive to learning in a district with sufficient resources that are reasonably equal among other schools in the same state (SETDA, 2021). According to Fynn, Kwegyiriba & Mensah (2021), there are auditory learners, visual learners, kinesthetic learners and tactile learners. They seemed to admit that considering the diverse ways of assimilating knowledge, the activities