Deputy Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Adutwum, has described a proposal made by the Conference of Heads and Assisted Senior High Schools (CHASS) concerning instituting levy charges on senior high schools as a non-starter.
According to him, the rejection of the demands of CHASS to have Free Senior High School (Free SHS) policy reviewed by allowing these schools charge certain levies in an era of “free senior high school” is unthinkable.
As such, any acceptance of their demands will ultimately defeat the purpose of the free senior high school programme which government is championing and aims to increase the access to education which may be foiled due to the levies imposition.
“To say that the government should somehow allow you [CHASS] to levy your own fees against parents in an era of free Senior High School is what I don’t understand. I really don’t understand the point in saying that Senior High School is free, the government has absorbed fees, the government is even paying development levies, which is even supposed to be used for school construction and other infrastructure development that the school wants to undertake, and yet we are still asking the government to allow us to levy the students, no”.
Speaking at CHASS’ 5th Annual Conference at Cape Coast in the Central Region, Dr. Adutwum noted that, government, however, does not oppose the voluntary acceptance of payment of levies unanimously agreed on by parents and other stakeholders to that effect, as against the idea being imposed on parents.
“That is not part of what free Senior High School should be about. On the other hand, if you have a group of parents, or parents of any school, who are saying that, can we support our school, yes, of course, they can support their school. They can voluntarily donate to support their school in the same way that old students do but cannot allow the introduction of fees through the back door and then the results of that will be, students who cannot pay those fees will not be allowed to attend school. That will defeat the purpose of free Senior High School, which has alleviated the suffering of the poor in this country, and that is not what the government of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and free Senior High School should be about”.
The President of CHASS on his part, intimated that, Parents Teachers Association activities were losing steam in schools due to the Free SHS programme.
“The observation of the Conference is that PTA activities are gradually dying in our schools. Hitherto, the PTAs were playing very significant roles in our schools”.
Highlighting the benefits of PTAs in schools, he stated that the associations in the past, used to augment provisions to schools when there were delays in release of funds, however, this is no longer possible in the free senior high school era.
“At present, even though there are delays in the release of funds, schools do not have the leverage like PTAs to assist them thus making the effective administration of schools problematic… If a policy is in place and for the past three years and it is not working, then we need to take another look at it”.
