The head of the Public Interest and Accountability (PIAC) has warned that if more sustainable financing methods are not developed to support the Free SHS policy, it risks losing its relevance.
Dr. Steve Manteaw explained that should the delays witnessed in the disbursement of funds persist, parents who can afford the fees may be compelled to withdraw their children from the public schools to the private secondary schools where funds are available to run the schools.
Citing the case of Uganda where he said similar delays led to the ineffective running of the Free SHS programme there, Dr Manteaw noted that parents withdrew their wards leaving the High Schools to operate like ‘cyto’ as we call public basic schools.
This, the PIAC boss believes, could be Ghana’s fate should government fail to identify alternative sources of financing the flagship policy.
“When that happens, the rich in society began to take their children out of public secondary schools to private international schools. So now, secondary schools in Uganda have become the ‘cyto’ that we have in our primary schools” he pointed out.
Dr Manteaw submitted, “So if we are not careful, that is what we are going to do to our secondary schools. So now what is going to happen is that those who made these bad policies for our education will take their children to expensive private schools and leave the poor with a broken-down school.”
Government spent about 99% of the Annual Budget Funding Amount equivalent to GH¢414 million, dedicated to funding critical aspects of the educational sector, on the Free SHS programme.
But PIAC boss was concerned that considering the unstable movement of prices of oil on the world market Ghana’s over-reliance on oil to fund the policy could cause a huge gap in funding should price fall low.
In his opinion, the policy is meant to be a social intervention, therefore, should be made to benefit only the least privileged in society.
“Why should government pay the schools fees of all the 275 parliamentarians’ children?” he quizzed.
“I am not saying we should not use oil revenue to finance the free SHS but we do not have to rely too heavily on it because the price of crude oil is very volatile to put your hopes on it,” Dr Manteaw remarked.
Instead of investing in education, Dr Manteaw maintained that government should invest the money in job creation mechanisms that will grow the economy.
“When there is job, people will earn income and they will not need anybody to pay their children’s school fees. It is because there is no job, there is so much poverty and we are running and hailing free SHS,” he stated.
The PIAC boss expressed these concerns when he addressed journalists at a three-day training programme on the natural resources sector policy and regulatory framework in Accra
