A Ranking Member of the Education Committee of Parliament, Dr. Clement Apaak, has revealed the NDC will revert to the old system of decentralizing the feeding of senior high schools which saw managers of senior high schools take charge of the feeding of the students and reinstate the parent- teacher-association, PTA.
Speaking to Dreamz News, the Builsa South Constituency Lawmaker says the current manner of implementing the free senior high school program is making the management of senior high schools extremely difficult.
The government, following the introduction of the free SHS program, removed the Parent-teacher association making it difficult for schools to augment disbursements from the government with funds raised from payments.
In the 2022/2023 academic year, some schools had to make students buy many items including light bulbs due to delays in making funds available to schools.
Another issue to be looked at by the NDC involves the supply of food items to various schools and this according to the NDC will be reversed.
Dr. Apaak holds a strong opinion that it is better for payments to be made to the various schools for the various headmasters to identify their local suppliers.
Apart from these measures, the NDC intends to hold a national stakeholders forum on free SHS and equally involve private senior high schools in the implementation of the free SHS program.
“We going to hold a national stakeholders forum on the free senior high school, we are going reinstate the role of the PTAs, we going to revert to the old arrangement where the feeding grant was given to the headmasters for them to identify their needs and their own local suppliers and plan their own menus.
We are also going to bring on board the private schools to fully participate and I believe if we do this in addition to completing all the uncompleted structures dotted around the campuses of our various senior high schools, we will be able to address the challenges facing secondary education in a way and a manner that will make our students viable to write and pass exams on their own accord.”
He holds the view that education is going through a crisis.
“Education in Ghana is going through, a severe crisis and we have constantly complained about the erratic calendar. We need to rearrange and fix what is going on in the educational sector where can have a consistent calendar, where the students will spend sufficient time in school.
