H.E Mahama asked to prioritise Pre-tertiary Education Funding Act
The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has called on President-elect John Dramani Mahama to ensure passage of the Pre-tertiary Education Funding Act to help revive the gradual collapse of pre-tertiary schools.
In an interview with 3News, the General Secretary of the teacher union, Thomas Musah Tanko said, the funding sources could come from Property Tax and Parent Teacher Association (PTA) contributions to fund the Act.
He expressed confidence that the funds raised through the Pre-tertiary Education Funding Act could be used to address infrastructure deficit, capitation grants and other challenges with the free Senior High School program.
“We want to remind His Excellency the President-elect John Dramani Mahama, we beg him, we must get our education system right. The only weapon available to break poverty is education. The only way we can sustain our democracy is education,” he noted.
Mr Tanko added “Mr. President, please the education problem you cannot do it alone and our hope is that you said we will all discuss these things together.
The position of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) is this, we need a Pre-tertiary Education Funding Act that will determine how we want to fund pre-tertiary education in Ghana.”
The Secretary of the pre-tertiary teacher union furthered “And when we get that particular Act, we can all be assured whether you are rich or you are poor, we will be assured as to how we intend to fund our education system.
We have the PTA contributions, it could find its way into the Act; we legalize it giving parents the opportunity, we also find a way of taxing the rich to care for the poor.”
Mr Thomas Musah Tanko also identified other possible sources saying “We are talking about this petroleum resources and all that. A certain percentage of it could be dedicated to the Pre-tertiary Education Act.
We can look at property rates, we can take some portion of it. If today, we say that let us add .000% to the value-Added Tax (VAT) so that VAT can go into funding education everybody will clap for it.”
