Dedicate fund to pre-tertiary education – GNAT cries out to next govt

The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) is pushing for the state to urgently set up a system of dedicated funding for senior high, junior high and basic schools, also known as pre-tertiary education. 

The largest pre-tertiary grouping of teachers said a dedicated source of funding would not only address the challenges bedevilling the free senior high school (Free SHS) policy but would also cure the dwindling quality at the junior high and basic school levels.

“This call is in the national interest for the establishment of the fund which should be a matter of priority for the new government because the consequences of inadequate funding for pre-tertiary education could be dire if there is no such dedicated funding to solve the problems and provide quality education to Ghanaian children”.

In an exclusive interview, the General Secretary of GNAT, Thomas Tanko Musah, said GNAT was ready to play a key role in a national conversation to identify and codify how pre-tertiary education should be adequately funded to improve the quality and make public schools, which remain the first and only choice for the majority of Ghanaians, a competitive alternative to private schools.

Suggested sources

To set the ball rolling, GNAT suggested the nation could consider a one percentage increase in the Value Added Tax (VAT), the efficient collection of property rate and setting part aside to fund pre-tertiary education; a dedicated percentage of oil revenue and a look towards development partners and corporate organisations.

Mr Musah said parent-teacher associations should be revived to ensure that they contributed to funding that level of education, while incentives could be provided to stimulate the involvement of old students’ associations, alumni groups and missions, among others, to contribute their quota.

“Where we are now, it looks like the attention is now on the senior high school at the detriment and disadvantage of the kindergarten, primary and junior high schools, which is not the way to go,” the General Secretary of GNAT said.

“When teachers go to school, the things that must help them for teaching and learning to take place are not there. So, you see teaching taking place, but learning is not. Learning is said to have taken place when there is a change in behaviour,” Mr Musah explained.

The GNAT General Secretary further explained that education was for the public good and the only weapon that could be used to break the poverty cycle; therefore, the an urgent need for dedicated funding to ensure that children at the pre-tertiary level had access to quality education.

“All the great men came from poor backgrounds and if you ask them, they will tell you, but for education, and looking at it carefully, once one person is able to break through, successive generations will follow in that path,” he said.

According to the GNAT leadership, the way funding of pre-tertiary was proceeding was making the private sector alternatives the preferred option, saying if the trend persisted “education then will go to the highest bidder. If you can pay, you get the quality. If you cannot pay, you don’t get it”.

Mr Musah cited some of the ramifications of inadequate pre-tertiary education funding including the government’s indebtedness to the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) that had impeded the marking of the 2024 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School Candidates.

The list also included the capitation grant, which was supposed to be used for the running of the basic schools. However, it was not only paltry but it had always been in arrears for at least two years, giving room for inflation to erode its value.

“Inflation has wiped out everything. So technically speaking, at the kindergarten (KG), primary and junior high school (JHS) levels, we are in crisis, seriously speaking. It is only at the senior high school (SHS) level that has seen some kind of sustained investment because of the free SHS,” he said.

Again, Mr Musah said only GH¢1.20 was allocated to the school feeding programme and wondered where anybody could source food for a child with that amount.

He also asked why SHSs were fed under the FSHS policy, while students at the JHS level were not.

That meant that pupils in KG and primary were being fed, and JHS had been skipped to the benefit of SHS students, describing the policy as improper.

Mr Musah said another evidence of the inadequate funding of pre-tertiary education was that about 95 per cent of the budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Education went into wages and salaries, leaving the remaining five per cent for goods and services. Besides, the releases were irregular.

“Sometimes when they give you one today, it would take another two to three months before you are given another,” he said, and sometimes it is only after unions had threatened with harsh industrial actions that “they will come and give you something small to pacify you”.

Danger

At the current stage of the country’s development, Mr Musah said the association thought there was a need to make the way clearer on sustainable funding for pre-tertiary education.

Mr Musah said if care was not taken, pupils would get to Class Three and would not be able to read and write and that the tendency for them to leave school was high.

Another danger, he said, was people would not send their children to the public schools but the private ones, although the public school teachers were paid to remain in the classrooms.

“It also means that if you cannot pay and go to the public school, the child would have to leave along the line and go into child labour.

Mr Musah expressed the belief that if dedicated funding sources were identified for pre-tertiary education, the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) could then be used to cater for the tertiary level.

He said the dedicated funding was also needed for the country to deliver itself from the World Bank’s prediction in 2018 about the human capital index report that 56 per cent of its human capital would go to waste.