Head Teachers in public basic schools in most parts of the country have been crediting chalks and other teaching and learning materials for their schools four weeks into the 2013/2014 academic year.
Daily Guide leant that the government through the district directorates of education has failed to supply schools with the essential commodities such as registers, teachers� lesson notebooks and chalks, compelling school heads to use their own pocket monies, and in some cases, buy them on credit from private bookshops.
According to some aggrieved head teachers who spoke with Daily Guide from various locations across the country, their Capitation Grant which they are use to buy some basic teaching and learning materials and other educational materials for their schools has also onto been paid since the beginning of the year.
They said only two trenches of the 2012/2013 academic year Capitation Grant were paid as the last trench which was for the third term is still pending.
For some time now, the head teachers disclosed, the government had failed to supply the schools with teachers� lesson notebooks, registers, continuous assessment forms, cumulative records forms and report cards.
The situation, according to them, had impacted negatively on the quality of education delivery in the country which reflected in the results of the 2013 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), where majority of the children could not make it to the Senior High School (SHS) level.
A head teacher in the Sunyani West District, for instance, mentioned that he had so far bought about GH�100.00 worth of chalk from the market since school re-opened and also bought lesson notebooks for his teachers, from his meager salary.
He stated that if the situation was not addressed immediately, the whole educational system in the country could collapse because the already overburdened head teachers could no longer use their small over-taxed salaries to fund t heir schools.
Meanwhile, some education directors who spoke to Daily Guide have assured school heads that the Ghana Education Service has procured a large consignment of chalk to be supplied to schools and by the close of next week every school would have received their due.
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