The President of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS), Rev. Fr. Stephen Owusu Sekyere, is urging government to increase funding for senior high schools by 20 per cent and to clear outstanding debts, saying delays in releases are hindering essential school operations.
He also called for an emergency intervention to resolve the shortage of basic academic resources such as furniture, and appealed to government to complete the stalled GETFund projects in schools.
Rev. Fr. Owusu Sekyere said the association has collated every outstanding balance owed to schools from 2021 to 2024. Settlements meant to help schools clear their long-standing debts have so far been only partially paid.
“We have collated every outstanding balance from 2021 to 2024 that remains unpaid.”
Rev. Fr. Stephen Owusu Sekyere
A particular concern is the examination fee component of the allocation, which he said has been withheld. He said it should be released immediately. He noted that schools bear a heavy cost to conduct standard end-of-semester examinations.
The outstanding debts, Rev. Fr. Owusu Sekyere said, are putting heads under intense pressure. Heads are held to account by the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service and are expected to deliver their best, yet they are doing so without the means.
Funding Out of Step with Economy
At the centre of the appeal is the call for a 20 per cent increase in funding. Rev. Fr. Owusu Sekyere urged government to align allocations to schools with current economic conditions, since the cost of running a school has risen while the sums released have not kept pace.
He said a transition to a unified system will significantly lower operational costs, and he linked that change to the pressure on school budgets. At CHASS’s 63rd annual conference in October 2025, the Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, said GH¢300 million would be allocated in 2026 to end the double-track system in senior high schools.
He also drew attention to shortfalls in teaching staff, non-teaching personnel, classrooms and dormitories since the policy began. These are the core inputs on which a school depends, and gaps in them affect how many pupils can be admitted, how they are housed and how they are taught.
Furniture and the Call for Emergency Action
Rev. Fr. Owusu Sekyere said the persistence of furniture shortages is difficult for heads to understand, given that basic academic resources should be among the first things a school has.
“It is increasingly becoming difficult for heads to appreciate why basic academic resources like furniture should remain a perennial challenge. We call on government to roll out an emergency intervention to resolve this problem.”
CHASS, Rev. Fr. Stephen Owusu Sekyere
He also appealed to government to complete the several stalled GETFund projects in senior high schools across Ghana.
Government’s Commitments
At the same CHASS conference in October 2025, Mr. Iddrisu said government had spent close to GH¢5 billion on the Free Senior High School programme that year and planned to spend about the same in 2026.
He said that level of spending met what he called “the political and financial adequacy test of the FSHS programme.” He said the President had asked for a policy shift so that GETFund would finance all expenditure related to the programme, a change he acknowledged would affect the Fund’s traditional core mandate.
He added that all CHASS institutions would move to post-paid electricity meters from January 2026 to address intermittent power outages, and that groundbreaking for 16 standard libraries was planned for the first quarter of 2026.
Government said it channelled GH¢6.76 billion into key education programmes in the first half of 2026, according to the Business & Financial Times.
Attention now turns to whether government will release the examination fee component and settle the balances from 2021 to 2024. The size of the next allocation to senior high schools, the pace of the shift to a unified system and the completion of the stalled GETFund projects will show how far government is ready to go in answering CHASS’s appeal.
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