Public basic schools are suffering, even GHS10/pupil a year is never paid – Headteacher

Do you know that public basic schools are suffering and that even GHS10/pupil a year for school management is never paid in full and there are many terms in arrears since 2019?

An anonymous headteacher who granted Adom FM an interview on 8th July 2022 during the morning show described the plight of public basic schools in Ghana as pathetic. He said the public has no idea of the sad state of schools and what head teachers and teachers go through to teach and manage the schools.

Public basic schools are suffering, even GHS10/pupil a year is never paid

The government of Ghana only makes GHS10.00 per learner per annum available to public schools for taking care of expenses related to the learner, which includes the end-of-term examination. He was quick to add that, the funds do not come regularly as required and that the government is in debt for several terms up to date. In the 2019/2022 academic year, the government paid for only term one, leaving terms two and three which are still outstanding, The 2020/2021 term saw the government paying for the 1st and second trench and no funds have been made available for the current 2021/2022 academic year.

The failure of the government to finance the activities and management of basic schools in Ghana has compelled many head teachers to run the schools from their personal pockets.

He lamented the challenges that head teachers have to endure and cover up for the government just to run end-of-term assessments for learners. Furthermore, he quizzed if private schools write end-of-term examinations and whether they are required to write them at all. Speaking on the sad plight of public schools, he asked how many of the politicians out there have enrolled their wards in public schools.

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He asserted that politicians have enrolled their wards in private schools and pay termly examination fees, however, public schools have had issues with administering end-of-term examinations for the past three to four years.

The head teacher added that end-of-term examinations in public schools have become a big bottleneck from the second term of the 2019/2022 academic year. The GES gave a directive that parents should not be made to pay exam printing fee, which is collected by schools for running and administering examinations.

Before this directive, the government was not printing and supplying public basic schools with end-of-term examination materials. To run such examinations, the schools with the help of parents planned and managed the end-of-term examination from their contributions.

Indeed, public basic schools are suffering.

Source: Ghana Education News

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