Heads of SHSs threaten closure of schools due to unpaid subsidies
Government-assisted senior high schools may be forced to close down if the government does not promptly release subsidies meant for their efficient operation.
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The subsidies, which are not flat rates for all schools, are released on a termly basis and are meant to take care of utilities, maintenance of office equipment, office stationery, postage and maintenance of equipment of senior high/technical schools.
Subsidies in arrears
The government pays a subsidy of about GH¢25 per student per term.
Since the beginning of the 2013/2014 academic year, the government has not released the subsidies meant for the first term, even though the third term ends by July 31, 2014.
Consequently, there is an uneasy calm among heads of such schools, who have since the beginning of the academic year relied on credit to run their schools.
And as the academic year grinds to an end, the debtors are knocking at the doors of these headmasters, who in turn are pouring their frustrations on the leadership of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary School (CHASS) to get the government to honour its part of the deal.
Reminder
In an interview in Accra yesterday, the President of the CHASS, Mr Samuel Ofori-Adjei, said in May this year, CHASS wrote a reminder to the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the GES Council on the need to release the subsidies to enable the schools to operate smoothly.
“In June, the GES Council invited us to a meeting, where I led a delegation of CHASS to present what is affecting our work, and a subcommittee of the council, which is in charge of basic/secondary education, met us last week and we raised all the issues including the subsidies and feeding fees of GH¢25 per student,” he explained.
Mr Ofori-Adjei told the Daily Graphic that the subcommittee informed the CHASS delegation that it was conveying their grievances to the entire council “and as we speak, nothing has come out of it”.
He said the heads were worried as to how to get the money to pay their debtors and also run the end of the third term examinations.
Imminent closure of the school
Mr Ofori-Adjei explained that the pressure from CHASS members compelled him to speak to the Director-General, explaining that “if we are not careful, we may be forced to close earlier than scheduled”.
Mr Ofori-Adjei said the Director-General promised that the Ministry of Finance would release the first term’s subsidies by next week.
He said when he passed on the information to the executive members, they were not happy and, therefore, decided to convene an emergency meeting of the regional chapter next week Tuesday to come up with a position.
Mr Ofori-Adjei said CHASS never wanted to come out publicly on the issues as; “we thought that government would also be faithful with us”.
Time-bound activities
He made it clear that some of their activities were time-bound, adding, for instance, that “if the first-year students come and I have to buy teaching and learning materials for them to study a particular concept in form one and the subsidies are not brought so I use the money meant for teaching and learning to go and do certain things, it would affect the students.”
Asked how much the government owes CHASS in subsidies, he could not give a definite figure, explaining that a term could be over GH¢30 million considering the fact that there were over 750,000 students.
Mr Ofori-Adjei, who is also the Headmaster of Accra Academy, explained that CHASS, as of now, could not tell the exact number of government-assisted senior high schools, since the government absorbs subsidies for some private SHSs every year, adding that CHASS would be able to know the total number by September at its conference.
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