Many Basic School Teachers and their Heads in the country have dolefully expressed great displeasure over the Mahama-led government’s less concern for the rights and plights of the Basic schools in the country.
Head teachers of basic schools have over the years been exhibiting much worry over the late receipt of Capitation Grant which came to replace the fee paying system at the basic school level.
The situation has unfortunately been much serious that during the 2012/2013 academic year, the government paid capitation grants for one out of the three terms and in this 2013/2014 academic year which has about six weeks to end, the schools have received no funds from ‘above’.
In the midst of this failure on the part government to discharge such an essential responsibility, head teachers have been restricted from taking monies from school children for any administrative purpose. So the legitimate question asked by these administrators is ”how do we get money to run the schools’?
As answers to these questions have not been provided by the government, visits to some of the schools have led to the discovery that the woes of the schools and the heads have been aggravated by the inability of the government to also provide adequate number of relevant teaching and learning materials to the schools. Most of the schools visited in the Ashanti Region’s capital Kumasi during the second and third weeks of the third term, had then received materials like Attendance registers, Teachers’ Lesson Note books and Atlases meant for the 2013/2014 academic year which is ending in less than two months. The teachers were not however worried about the late delivery but the number of items which was far less than what the schools needed.
Notwithstanding the number of teachers in a school, the numbers of materials given were Four (4) Teachers’ Lesson Notebooks, Five (5) Attendance registers and 70 atlases. But some of the schools had as many as eighteen teachers on post, who were supposed to share the Four Teachers’ Note books, and twelve classes against the Five Attendance registers.
The Head teachers have therefore appealed to the government to come out clearly on whether it is interested in sustaining the capitation grant system and the provision of required teaching and learning materials or allowing the administrators of the Basic schools to take fees from parents to enable them properly manage the basic schools.
Currently, several Head teachers have asked their teachers to buy Teachers’ Lesson Note books and other teaching/learning materials from their pockets so that refund will be made when capitation grant is paid. The Head teachers have also embarked on several official duties with their personal monies with the hope of getting them back when this same ”Capitation Grant” is paid. Many of the schools have huge debts to pay with the one year-two terms unpaid capitation grant, but no one knows when it will hit their school accounts.
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