EduWatch calls on Govt to fund exam fees of basic school students
Education think tank – Africa Education Watch (EduWatch), citing the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education policy, has called on the central government to fund public basic school students’ examination fees.
The Executive Director of the Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, in a social media post sighted by Preteriaty.com, emphasized that it is the government’s responsibility to fund basic school examinations, not parents’.
“It is the responsibility of GoG to fund basic school exams, not parents. Though funds have not been available for years, the imposition of fees on parents by teachers to atone for GoG funding deficits is not a sustainable way to implement a policy,” he said.
The EduWatch Director’s call follows an allegation that some public basic school headteachers are forcing parents to pay examination fees, threatening they will exclude their wards from the examination if they fail to pay.
Saying it is illegal to charge or collect any form of fees, including examination fees in government basic schools, Kofi Asare said the action of the headteachers is also against the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) policy introduced in 1995, aimed to provide quality basic education to all school-aged children.
“Those basic school heads forcing parents to pay exam fees or exclude their wards from the exam must stop. It is against the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education policy to exclude pupils from the exam on financial grounds,” Kofi Asare noted.
The Education Watch Director amid the allegations has said, “Anyone whose ward is prevented from writing this week’s basic school exam because they owe any fee should call 0303975001″, adding ‘Our people are on the ground.”
Relatedly, the Ghana Education Service (GES) has said it is illegal for any head of a second cycle school to prevent any final-year student from writing the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for owing school fees.
GES has, therefore, warned that any head who is reported to have prevented students from writing the WASSCE will be put before a disciplinary committee, and when found guilty, he or she will be sanctioned accordingly.
An official of the GES under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, in an interview, said, “All heads are instructed not to prevent any student who has registered with the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) from writing the examination.”
The GES official indicated that his outfit is aware that some students owe school fees, but that it has put in place mechanisms to ensure that the students pay their fees.
He explained that heads of second-cycle schools had been instructed to compile the names of students who owed fees and send them to the Secondary Division of the GES for onward submission to WAEC to block the results of the affected students until they had finished paying their fees.
The Ghana Education Service (GES) staff said such students’ results would not be displayed online until the students proved with documentation that they had cleared their fees before WAEC could unblock their results.
Giving the procedure for a blocked result to be unblocked, he said the affected student needed to go to his or her former school to pay his or her school fees in full, after which the headmaster of that school would issue a letter, which the student would present to the GES, which would then instruct WAEC to unblock such a candidate’s result.
“This arrangement has been in place for the past three years, and it has proved to be very effective. So if a student owes at the time of writing the exam, the head must allow him or her to write because he or she has already registered with WAEC,” he explained.
