Most secondary schools in the country are struggling for survival and may not be able to reopen for the next academic year, according to the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS).
Government is promising to extend free education to boarders from the next academic session, but it appears it’s just a mere propaganda to win votes because CHASS says even the GH¢38 promised for day students, introduced in the current academic calendar under the progressively free education, is in arrears for two terms.
At a press conference in Accra yesterday, CHASS President, Cecilia Kwakye Coffie, catalogued a myriad problems facing teaching and learning in second cycle schools across the length and breadth of the country, saying that the government had failed to live up to its responsibilities.
This was after several attempts to get the government and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to fix the problems had failed to yield fruit.
For now, members of CHASS said they had reached a breaking point where “if nothing is done as a matter of urgency, education in the second cycle schools in Ghana will suffer greatly,” – possibly a closure of the schools.
Chief among them, Ms Cecilia Coffie said, was the issue of unpaid absorbed fees and feeding grants for the second and third terms of the year 2015/2016 academic year.
According to her, the feeding grants in the three Northern Regions, northern Volta and northern Brong-Ahafo are all in arrears, for which reason students are being fed on credit while heads of the institutions are being harassed by their creditors.
The schools, she explained, are saddled with huge debts with creditors chasing them for payments.
She revealed that “GoG [Government of Ghana] grant for administration has not been paid since 2011.”
That was aside the fact that the much touted progressively free scholarship for day students by government had remained outstanding, not to talk about the government of Ghana scholarship to beneficiary students, which had not been paid for the 2015/2016 academic year.
Terkper’s Tax On Feeding
The Finance Minister, Seth Terkper, has also extended his insatiable appetite for tax to the feeding grant of the students.
The president of CHASS insisted that “the feeding fee of GH¢3.30 per student per day for three meals is woefully inadequate, while there is a tax component of 17.5% VAT and 3% withholding tax.”
That, she claimed, “has resulted in huge debt in schools.
She therefore stressed the need for the feeding fee to be increased because “prices of goods and services have gone up drastically since 2014 when the fees were fixed.”
The price of gari, for example, he indicated, had shot up from GH¢2.40 to GH¢10 per an American tin (Olonka).
The heads of assisted secondary schools also talked about the issue of high electricity and water bills which had become a major source of worry for not only schools, but industries and domestic homes.
Apart from that, they also talked about the high expenditure on sanitation which includes dislodging of solid and liquid waste.
“The fumigation cost, as a result of bed bugs infestation in schools, is just too high.”
Meanwhile, the sanitation fees are part of the absorbed fees which have not been paid for the second and third terms.
The heads have therefore made a passionate appeal to the sector Minister of Education, Prof Jane Naana Opoku-Agyeman, the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the GES management to expedite action on the concerns raised.
“Lest, schools cannot reopen for the 2016/17 academic year which would affect secondary school education in the country immensely,” they said.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu