A former Minister for Education and Member of Parliament for Secondi, Papa Owusu-Ankomah, has suggested that �well-endowed� basic and senior high schools in Ghana should be made fee-paying institutions to free scarce national resources to support struggling public schools.
A school is said to be fee-paying if it operates largely or entirely on rational fees paid by students without government subvention or subsidies. Usually, fees in such schools are set beyond the reach of students whose parents live below the economic ladder.
The Sekondi MP made the call on the floor of Parliament after his colleague MP for Akatsi North, Peter Nortsu-Kotoe, read a statement in which he called on government to hand over all mission schools to their original owners to help restore academic discipline.
�Mr. Speaker, the District Directors of Education are facing a number of challenges that make it difficult for them to supervise all schools under them. If these Mission authorities are allowed to take over the schools for supervision as well as management, the level of education that we cry daily has fallen can be restored,� the Akatsi North MP said.
Additionally, Mr. Nortsu-Kotoe said, �well meaning members of the various religious bodies can help in the development and maintenance of these schools.�
�I wish to call on the Ghana Education Service to shirk itself of functions that it finds difficult to perform; hand over mission schools to the religious bodies so that education can be managed more effectively at the pre-tertiary level,� he told the House.
Commenting on the Akatsi North MP�s call, Papa Owusu-Ankomah said the statement came at the right time �but also raises the bigger questions as to whether we need not think out of the box and see how best we can deliver excellence in education.�
�If you look at some of these well endowed schools, 90 percent ... of the entrants attend ... private basic schools where they pay substantial fees... even higher than some of the fees they pay in secondary schools.
�...is it not possible to have an arrangement where some of these schools could generate some resources so that the meagre resources that we always have to give to educational institutions are concentrated on even community schools�� those that need help.�
Papa Owusu Ankoma�s call echoed an earlier stance he took during his days in the Kufour government, prompting �someone� he recalled, to call him �elitist�.
While dismissing the �elitist� tag his previous call had generated, the Secondi MP said, �I believe I was being realistic and that we must let the little resources that we have achieve maximum effect.�
He added, �...I am saying that the time has come for our country to be realistic about some of these things.�
If Mr. Ankomah�s call is implemented by the government, Senior Secondary Schools like Achimota, Presec, Prempeh College, St Augustine, Wesley Girls, Accra Academy, Ketasco etc. will be reserved for children of parents with deep pockets.
Mr Owusu Ankomah responded to the Akatsi North MP�s call on government to return Mission Schools to their previous owners.
�We are a religious country but we are not a denominational country. So when it comes to doctrine, are we then going to say that if you attend Methodist School it is the Methodist doctrine that should be applied? But I am saying that all these issues can be discussed and then we get a certain outcome because I know that many of the basic schools in this country that were set up by the Mission Schools are being funded to some extent by the churches,� he said.
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