One of the surest ways to save the cooks who have to always buy on credit for supplies, cook with just a GHS1.2 budget per child, and serve hot meals each day is for the government to increase basic school feeding grants from GH¢1.2 to GH¢3. Children, right from primary to their seniors in JHS3 are supposed to be fed with GHS1.20 a day under the current policy.
Education think tank Africa Education Watch (EduWatch) has called on the Ministry of Education to increase the amount spent on feeding per basic school pupil.
Speaking at the 2023 Education Financing Conference held at the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement, University of Ghana, the Executive Director for EduWatch, Kofi Asare, stated that the current GH¢1.2 per meal is woefully inadequate to provide nutritious meals for pupils and must therefore be increased.
Mr. Asare further indicated that the government must allocate at least 60 percent of the 2024 GETFund budgetary allocation toward improving education infrastructure.
“The MoE must increase the GSFP per unit allocation of the current GH¢1.2 per meal to GH¢3. This will help mitigate the impact of high food inflation. Efforts should be made to deepen transparency in the GSFP while fully decentralizing its management to local authorities.
“The MoE must allocate at least 60% of the 2024 GETFund budgetary allocation to financing education infrastructure, with priority to basic education.”
He also demanded that the Ministry of Education “must strengthen transparency and accountability in the utilization of the Capitation Grant at the district and school levels. The strict alignment of the Capitation Grant to School Performance Improvement Plans is critical to ensuring effective spending towards improving learning outcomes at the school level.”
The big question is given the harsh economic realities and the current price of foodstuffs on the Ghanaian market, what decent meal can GHS1.20 cook for a child to eat at school each day when a porridge with Koose is not less than GHS4.00?
Learners who attend private schools do not pay less than GHS7.00 for a day’s meal.
If the school feeding programme has to be run, it must be run well with enough funding to feed the children, or else the prudent decision of the government would be to cancel it.
The Ghana Education News Editorial Team is a specialized collective of education researchers, journalists, and policy analysts dedicated to providing high-fidelity reporting on the Ghanaian academic landscape. Serving as a primary bridge between governing bodies—including the Ghana Education Service (GES) and WAEC—and the public, the team leverages over a decade of combined experience to serve students, parents, and educators nationwide.
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