Builsa South Constituency MP and Deputy Ranking Member on the Education Committee in Parliament, Dr. Clement Apaak, has raised concerns regarding the government’s preference for secondary education over basic education.
He highlighted the government’s pronouncements, posture, and funding allocation as evidence of this bias.
“The government has shown through its pronouncements, its posture, and where funding is going that it is clearly favoring secondary education to the detriment of public basic education.”
According to Dr. Apaak, governments owe capitation grants to public basic schools for up to six terms. A situation, he says, has exerted a lot of pressure on the headteachers in public basic schools.
“So, as we speak now, the government has failed to pay capitation grants for six terms. It is this grant that allows us to say that public basic education is free. So, if capitation is not paid for six solid terms, you can imagine the pressure it places on heads of public basic schools.”
Dr. Apaak furthered that the lack of approved textbooks in public basic schools and the outstanding debts owed to school feeding caterers by the government further highlight the government’s lack of attention to public basic education.
“As we speak now, the textbooks as approved by NaCCA are not available in any reasonable quantity in schools in Ghana. The schools that have them do not even have the full complement of textbooks. So clearly, we can’t say we are doing okay; we have not paid capitation grants, the schools don’t have the textbooks, and as we are speaking, caterers of the school feeding program have been on strike now for for over six weeks.”
Dr. Apaak expressed these concerns during an interview on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Gerard Awombadek Asagi|Ghana
