Remembering a past
The directive from the Ghana Education Service for the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools to start the implementation of the progressively free secondary education policy has reminded me of my past.
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Indeed, it is about whether the obligation must be on the government to release funds for such purposes on
It has become an annual ritual for students on government scholarship schemes to face inconveniences, including being sent home in anticipation of the payment of their fees from the scholarship scheme. The commonest that comes to mind is the Northern Scholarship Scheme under which, annually, beneficiary students are sent home or the re-opening of their
There are also beneficiaries of the GETFund scholarship, including overseas students who sometimes have to delay their programmes or stay for months without receiving their scholarship stipends, prompting some foreign educational institutions to make it a precondition that fees must be settled before students are formally admitted to pursue academic programmes.
So the directive to the CHASS might only work where the money is released on time. Already, some delays have been occasioned. The scheme was intended to have commenced with the 2015/2016 academic year. We are in the second term of the year and the directive has now gone out. The school heads need time to compile the necessary data for the GES to submit the claims. In between, the schools need money to operate, so
Personal experience
That was what happened to me in 1975, when as a Sixth Form student at Asankrangwa Secondary School we were asked to go home and bring our first term fees because the Scholarship Secretariat had delayed in releasing funds to pay for our fees and the school had no alternative source of funding to keep us in the boarding house.
Knowing where I was coming from and how my mother had suffered
It did not take long for a response to be provided. My fee was to be settled immediately, but the amount was to be taken from the allocation of the Western Region Directorate of the Ghana Education Service. But that marked another odyssey for me. Even before I received a copy of the letter from the Office of the Head of State, addressed to the regional director, I was summoned one early morning to the office of the headmaster of Asankrangwa Secondary School to be questioned as to why I had to write the letter. I gathered courage and pointed out that I did not want to lose my education. Thereafter, the regional director, a stern man, decided to go slow on me to make me relax, mindful that if he pushed me too much, I could write another letter to embarrass him.
He, together with the headmaster,
Therefore there was no basis in asking us to go home to bring our fees. But they also explained to me that when that happened, the school authorities suffered from the delays as they had to find money to acquire whatever needed to be provided to meet our needs as boarding students.
The irony, though, was that my mates who brought their fees were never reimbursed. We were not told when the scholarship money came. In my case, I was asked not to go home any longer. I never heard again that Sixth Form students were sent home thereafter for the two years I spent in the school.
Having grown up to appreciate the realities which confront school authorities, I can only say that it is imperative that such subsidies are paid on time,