Students awaiting capitation grant
The flag-bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo Addo has promised Ghanaians that the free Senior High School (SHS) policy will be implemented when the NPP is voted into power to ensure that children do not drop out of school after the Junior High School level because of money.
According to the NPP, if a child went through basic education from primary to SHS and dropped out of school afterward, he or she would have been matured enough to enter into a vocational training or trading without being exploited by selfish adults.
Unfortunately, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in all their campaign activities have insisted that the free senior high school being promised by the NPP is impossible.
Recently, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in his address to TESCON members in the Upper East region said the NDC?s continuous doubt over the possibility of the policy was an exhibition of their inability to think outside the box for interventions that will improve the welfare of Ghanaians, especially those in the rural areas.
According to him, the NDC doubted the possibility of a nationwide National Health Insurance Scheme, School Feeding Programme, Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty (LEAP) and even Capitation Grant. He was surprised that the NDC government had not been able to manage these social interventions to lessen the hardship of most Ghanaians.
Checks done by the DAILY GUIDE in almost 100 public basic schools in the Bolgatanga municipality alone have revealed that they have not received the Capitation Grant since the last academic year, being 2011-2012.
A hand full of school heads told DAILY GUIDE that they recently received a small fraction of the unpaid Capitation Grant which could barely address the problems for which the Capitation Grant Policy was introduced. Checks in other districts in the Upper East region and the two other Northern regions also revealed that the situation was the same; government owes almost every school the Capitation Grant. Government is expected to pay GH? 4.5 as Capitation Grant for each basic school pupil.
In the past, parents had to pay school fees before their children could access basic education and for that reason, parents who could not afford the school fees had to withdraw their children from school.
Due to this challenge, many school-going age children stayed at home to either help their parents on their farms or take their cattle for grazing. Some children whose parents did not have farms or animals loitered around and picked up some bad habits.
With the introduction of the Capitation Grant under the Kufuor-led administration, parents who could not pay their children?s school fees were compelled to educate their children because their children could be admitted without admission or school fees.
Some of the school heads, who wanted to remain anonymous, said the Public School System was deteriorating under the NDC government and needed to be saved immediately.
?For some time now, even if you prepare your School Performance Improvement Plan and submit it to the office of the Ghana Education Service, some of your useful plans will be cancelled out leaving the less important ones that requires as low as GH?5 to execute. This first term for example, the Ghana Education Service has not given us Teachers? Lesson Note Book and Registers and because our Capitation Grant has not come, the school has not been able to buy teachers? lesson notebooks and registers. In a situation like this, if you have lazy and less innovative teachers, they would not prepare lesson notes and you can imagine how these teachers will teach our future leaders.
?Government has to take basic education seriously to ensure quality,? a junior high school head teacher lamented.
From: Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Bolgatanga
