Member of parliament for Builsa South and Deputy Ranking Member on Education Committee of Parliament, Dr Clement Apaak, has lamented the deteriorating state of sporting activities in the country’s basic schools due to government’s inability to release funds to that effect.
According to him, there is the need for government to take critical look at funding basic schools’ sports activities. This, he explained, can be readily achieved by government showing commitment to ensuring its sustenance.
“Basic Schools are struggling to fund sports activities due to governments’ refusal to disburse the Capitation Grant. This is yet another example of the neglect of our public basic schools by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia NPP government.”
Dr Clement Apaak
Meanwhile, the Conference of Heads of Basic Schools (COHBS) has revealed that it has come to its attention that the Sports and Culture Unit is preparing to organize Inter Circuits Sports Competition and has therefore charged the various Circuit Sports Secretaries to prepare their teams towards the aforementioned competitions with the key objective of selecting players to form the District Team.
It explained that it is obvious that in preparing the Circuits’ Teams, Schools usually pay or contribute monies – Affiliation Fee. However, it noted that it is crystal clear that no school in the district can boast of a “dime in the school’s coffers”.
COHBS lamented that most of the Heads used their own meagre salaries to cater for the Inter Schools Gala Competitions that were held last term because the Capitation Grant disbursed was woefully inadequate. To this end, it expressed the need for government to release the necessary funds to undertake the sport activities.
“We (COHBS) wish to bring it to the attention of the Sports and Culture Unit that we love our students and wish they thrive in their various fields but we have sacrificed enough and this time our resources have been depleted therefore we are not in the position to finance any activities with our meagre salaries.”
Conference of Heads of Basic Schools
Disbursement of capitation grant
The Conference of Heads of Basic Schools disclosed in a statement that it has omitted the name of the district as well as the district representative of the Conference of Heads of Basic Schools (COHBS) to protect him/her from victimization. It stated that public basic school system is collapsing and the sooner all and sundry call on the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia NPP government to “disburse the Capitation Grant”, the better for the future of Ghana.
Prior to this, the National President of the Conference of Heads of Basic Schools (CHOBS), Nicholas Nii Kpakpoe, revealed that heads of basic schools now depend on loans and personal savings to operate over lack of capitation grants. He stated that the current situation has made it extremely difficult for heads of schools to undertake certain school activities.
Nii Kpakpoe indicated that for seven terms now which sums up to two academic years, government has not given school heads their capitation grants which they use in running the affairs and activities in the schools.
In a similar vein, the General Secretary of the Conference of Heads of Basic Schools, Justice Adu Darko, expressed concern over the non-payment of capitation grant meant for the operationalization of basic schools for the past two years. He stated that the situation is crippling the progress of teaching and learning in schools.
The Ministry of Education, early this month, however, indicated that some GHC11 million has been released to schools as of November 2022.
Reacting to this, Dr Apaak cautioned the government against the delay in the payment of the capitation grants to the various basic schools.
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