Govt must abolish funding of all boarding facilities - Ken Thompson

Government is being urged to abolish the funding of all boarding facilities in schools.

His suggestion comes at a time government is striving to provide subsidies and other infrastructure facilities to improve educational structure of senior secondary schools.

Speaking at the Tema Secondary School 54th Anniversary celebration, Mr. Thompson said the funding, when abolished would reduce pressure on government’s budget on education following recent economic challenges.

He added that the “the youth of Ghana are receiving a second class education. This vaunted “change agents” are being taught by harassed and maybe ill resourced teachers and in circumstances that are really horrendous: overcrowded classrooms and dormitories, bare laboratories, ancient teaching aids and poor nutrition”.

As a result, “Ghanaians must let the government abolish funding of all boarding facilities and spend the feeding subsidy and other related subsidies which in two academic years was over US$330m in improving the quality of education by means of enhancing teachers’ performances, creating more space and resources, and increasing the participation of the private sector".

Mr. Thompson said that per his analysis, government spent almost GH¢479m among 685,000 students at a daily subvention of GH¢ 2.50 between 2014/2015 whereas a total amount of over GH¢ 685m among 741,000 students at a daily subvention of GH¢ 3.30 was budgeted for the 2014/2015 period.

This, he said, is one of the major setback to improving the country’s broken educational system.