Osei Yaw Adutwum – Minister of Education
Some parents of students in public and private primary and Junior High Schools (SHS) have started grumbling over what they describe as outrageous charges by school authorities.
The trend, according to some of these parents who spoke to the paper, begun when the government made basic to secondary education, free.
Since then, most of these school authorities are said to have adopted new ways and means to siphon money from parents with dubious and outrageous charges, virtually making nonsense of the idea and essence of the free education policy, thus undermining the NPP government.
This is because the introduction of the policy seems to have curtailed their sources of making money for themselves.
Some of these school authorities have thus decided to literally double the charges placed on items students are required to buy.
For instance, they complain bitterly about the prices of text and note books sold to students, sometimes almost double the actual price sold on the open market.
What seem to annoy most of these parents is the fact that the school authorities have made it a compulsion for these text and note books to be purchased from school and not to buy from outside at relatively cheaper prices and bring to the schools.
Some of these parents who spoke to Daily Guide extreme disgust at the development, accusing the Ghana Education Service (GES), the state agency that is supposed to regulate the activities and operations of educational institutions and the Ministry of Education have literally turned a deaf ear and blind eye to most of these concerns.
“My child is a primary three student of Martyr’s of Uganda Catholic school at Mamprobi, he has been asked to pay ¢730 for exercise books and text books. I think it is too much the Ministry of Education must step in to stop this extortion from government assisted schools. This is a clear attempt to make the FCUBE policy useless in the eyes of the poor citizens, government must act now to enhance trust in the free compulsory universal Basic education”, Enoch Osei noted with deep-seated concern.
Another parent, Bertha Azaglo complained bitterly about how authorities at her Ward’s school, a popular private school have barred students from bringing food from home to school, thereby making it compulsory for parents to pay ¢15.00 a day to eat from the school canteen.
“Nothing annoys me more than the fact the note books they used in their previous classes are nowhere close to even getting half full but they want us to buy brand new note books as if we have money to waste and they don’t care about needless cost they are putting on our already heaven-laden shoulders”, he said with rage.
Most of the disgruntled parents are therefore appealing to the GES and the Ministry of Education and by extension government to intervene to save them the stress and frustration.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu