Graphiconline yesterday published a story about the General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Thomas Musah, who called for a stakeholder engagement to discuss how parents could contribute to the Free Senior High School (FSHS) programme. According to the story, there was the need to consider parents’ input towards the effective implementation of the programme, especially in relation to prevailing challenges in the system.
Speaking on a wide range of issues concerning the Free Senior High School, Mr. Musah claimed that the government’s subvention for the Free SHS was in arrears for over three years now.
“The free SHS is a very good policy, it is an excellent policy and we all embrace it and we think that it is the way to go, but the implementation is a challenge. The cash flow challenges are having a ripple effect at the basic education level, and as we speak now, the Capitation Grant for basic education is in arrears for over two years,” Mr. Musah added.
In a related development, The Chronicle has carried a story on its center pages that School Feeding caterers from across the 16 regions of the country, under the various Metropolitan, Municipality and District Assemblies (MMDAs), have sworn never to go back to the various schools to cook for the pupils, until their conditions of service improve and their arrears paid by the government.
Madam Gifty Asamoah, Convener of the group, at a news conference organised by the aggrieved caterers in Kumasi, noted that until all payments due them were made through the School Feeding Secretariat and the Ministry of Finance, they would maintain their stance. Madam Asamoah explained that the government owes them arrears from 2017 to date.
Last year, there were reports of food shortages in some public Senior High schools in the country, leading to a situation where some heads considered shutting down their schools if the government failed to intervene.
The Chronicle is fully behind GNAT’s position and we hold the view that it is high time the government reviewed some of its interventions in the education sector, especially the feeding component of the Free Senior High School policy.
There is the need to take stock and review ways to make government interventions in the education sector better, and that parents must be allowed to support the system. The current system should be critically looked at to allow parents who can afford to pay to help meet the government halfway.
As we know, the government cannot do it all alone, so there is the need to address challenges in the policy to help find the right solutions to it. In order to do this, the government has to go back to the people to seek their input on how to address them.
Parents and guardians play significant roles in the lives of children, so there is the need to engage them when there are any challenges with the policies. Today we have a lot of old students who are supporting their alma mater and other stakeholders who are ready to help and, therefore, inviting them to get their input would be significant to the success of the programme.
