The Campaign Against the Privatization and Commercialization of Education (CAPCOE); a committee made up of some Teacher Unions and other players in the education sector, has kicked against the government’s intention to wean public tertiary institutions off its payroll.
This would mean that government would only provide the institutions would a certain predetermined amount of money. The management of the said institutions would then have to find innovative ways of coming up with funds to remunerate their staff and manage the day to day activities of the institutions.
Experts in education have however raised eyebrows over the proposition. They say that the decision if implemented would force the tertiary institutions to raise the amounts charged as fees to make up for the difference.
Speaking on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show, the National Programs Manager, Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC), Festus Longmatey explained that should government decide to proceed with implementing its ideas, the gains of the government’s Free SHS Policy would be eroded.
“If you go to the basic level, we have free education. We also have Free Senior High School education. This has led us to have more students having access to Senior High School education and completing. In fact, if not for Free SHS we would have had a lot of people who should have been in school but would not have been there. The Free SHS has increased access”.
“If this system has introduced Free SHS education, why would the same system, after pre-tertiary education, create barriers for these same students, preventing them from accessing higher education?”
“For us, we still stand that government should not shirk their responsibility to the institutions,” he said.
Mr. Longmatey added that it would be unfortunate for suggestions to be made that students may have to rely entirely on loans to further their education.
Earlier, CAPCOE had released a statement. In the statement, the 10 educational bodies called on the government to find alternative means of raising revenue to manage the country.
A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
