By Buertey Francis BORYOR
The Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), has urged the government to prioritise investment in basic education infrastructure in this twilight of its turner in office to address the dire situation that persists in the space.
The education policy think tank lamented that public basic education is neither truly free, compulsory nor universally accessible to all Ghanaians due to social constraints such as poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and low resource allocation to the commitments in the policy.
With data from the Ministry of Education (MoE) suggesting that over 2.3 million girls do not have seating and writing places, whilst some 5,000 basic schools exist under trees, sheds and dilapidated structures, infrastructure investment in this sector is very critical, requiring urgent attention.
The Executive Director of Eduwatch, Kofi Asare, has also called on the leadership of the two top political parties- the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to prioritise basic education infrastructure in their manifestos as they seek a political mandate to steer the affairs of the country for the next four years.
He mentioned that civil society organisations (CSOs) would continue to engage with the parties to influence their manifestos to ensure that they align with the broad vision of the education sector.
“Both of them are yet to launch their manifestos but we are already in touch with them in respect of their manifesto processes. We will be meeting the NDC education manifesto committee soon. We expect to see an adequate prioritisation of basic education infrastructure in the manifestos of the political parties,” he elaborated.
He voiced concern over the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia’s speech at his campaign launch which omission any plan to address basic education infrastructure.
“Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia announced his education vision about a week ago and he did not mention support for basic education infrastructure. I was expecting to hear it feature prominently because of the inexcusable divide between the North and the South when it comes to basic education.
“We want to see much more priority being accorded the upgrading of education infrastructure in the deprived parts of this country- bearing in mind that over 5000 schools are still under trees and in dilapidated structures- the majority of which are located in the North East, Savannah, Oti, Northern and the Western North regions of the country,” he noted.
He made these remarks at a stakeholder engagement to deliberate on a drafted corporate support framework for basic education infrastructure.
The corporate support framework is to provide guidelines for local governments to harness and manage with transparency and accountability, resources mobilised from the corporate sector to support education infrastructure provision at the local level.
Board Member of Eduwatch, Dorothy Konadu, in her remarks, underscored the need for the private sector to support the government’s efforts at addressing the issue of desk inadequacy in the country’s public basic schools.
“While the government is supplying desks through the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), the annual 15,000 witnessed in recent years is a drop in a bucket. We believe non-state actors must support.
“Collaboration between local assemblies, religious groups, civil society organizations and private sector institutions is critical if we are to address desk inadequacy in our public basic schools. The government alone has proven incapable of delivering on the education infrastructure required to serve free compulsory universal basic education to all Ghanaian children,” she noted.
Local governments are mandated to provide infrastructure for basic schools. However, increased demand for social and economic infrastructure and services in the face of limited internally generated funds, and delayed release of inadequate earmarked funds limits their ability to meet education infrastructure needs in their jurisdiction.
