Prof. Jane Naana Opoku- Agyemang, Education Minister
Credible information reaching Today indicates that final year students of Senior High Schools (SHSs) are being compelled by tutors and housemasters/mistresses to pay ?invigilating and house-teachers? appreciation fees? before they finally graduate.
While Today discovered that the practice is common in second cycle institutions around the country, we also found that it has gained particular notoriety in the Eastern and the Central Regions.
Our findings indicate that final-year SHS students are compelled to pay between GH?60.00 and GH?100.00 supposedly as the above-mentioned fees, but the monies only go into the pockets and purses of teachers.
Our findings also show that the practice started in some schools few years ago when students themselves, out of appreciation for what teachers have done for them, gave out of their free will.
However, it has become pervasive in SHSs and has been lifted to the level of compulsory convention, which students must pay or be penalized somehow for it.
As a convention it has been christened ?custom fees.?
Then there is also the convention of ?invigilating fee,? which students are supposed to pay to tutors for sacrificing their time and energy to invigilate in the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE,) a job for which they are already paid by the Ghana Education Service (GES.)
The final-year students also have to pay ?house-teachers? appreciation fee to house-teachers in appreciation of their role in caring for the students whilst they were in school.
In all these cases, the teachers who collect the fees neither give the students receipt for the amounts nor render accounts to third party authorities over the accrued monies.
It would be recalled that in 2012, students were, out of the blue asked by school authorities, to bring bags of cement, packets of roofing sheets, buckets of paint, etc., to school. And when worried parents went asking questions they were told it was a GES directive.
When journalists went asking for answers no one at the GES or the Ministry of Education will talk.
It was then obvious that the directive may have come from the minister of Education.
Also this year, final-year students were asked at the start of the second term to pay fees for both second and third terms, although the current WASSCE calendar is such that those students will not be in school for the third term.
As if that was not enough, school authorities again sent finalists home few weeks ago to collect GH?100.00 each from parents because government did not release feeding grants to the schools.
During the 2012 Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) presidential encounter, President John Dramani Mahama said: ? ?In respect of affordability of SHS, we would reduce the burden on parents? Unauthorised fees, such as worker motivation fee and all kinds of fees the SHS have introduced themselves would be taken out.?
However, till date, no school authority; no official of the GES or Ministry of Education, and neither the Education minister nor Office of the President has explained to parents the charging of illegal fees since 2012.
Today discovered that students unable to pay the ?custom fees? and other illicit charges are often harassed and witch-hunted, especially during the writing of the WASSCE.
The situation is a source of worry to many students, especially those from homes already drained dry by illegal government charges. And some parents and guardians have received the news with fury, while others called it a pure case of extortion.
?This? must cease!? affirmed an irate parent, ?It? should be voluntary not compulsory.?
On several campuses, Today discovered, the situation is responsible for unease among students.
Some of the students, who spoke to this paper, said they cannot concentrate on their studies while tutors are constantly harassing them over ?custom fees.?
The situation, the paper understands, is causing a lot of uneasiness among the students who for one reason or the other have not paid the custom fees.
Experience over the last several years indicates that these unauthorized fees are simply Pyram-like schemes school authorities use to make no sweat, tax-free money off students and parents.
Simple arithmetic shows the huge amounts authorities are collecting in such schemes.
Normally, most SHSs have four houses and each house has one or two house teachers. Thus in a house with an average of 100 final-year students, and suppose students pay the least charge of GH?60.00 per head, the two house-teachers are netting GH?6,000.00.
If the ?invigilating fee? is set at the least charge of GH?60.00, and there are 400 finalists the teachers will bag GH?24,000.00; all that over the official invigilation allowances they are paid.
STORY: PHILIP KUMI
