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Immediate past president of the Catholic Bishops conference, Most Reverend Joseph Osei-Bonsu, has cautioned government against a total hand over mission schools back to religious institutions.

According to him, efforts to achieve quality education will be derailed if government relinquishes its stake in the mission school, especially as the government sets out to roll out its flagship free Senior High School (SHS) policy in September.

There have been ongoing meetings between religious institutions and the Ministry of Education to draw up modalities for the handover.

The Minister of Education, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, had earlier this year said government’s intention to hand over the mission schools was in fulfillment of the 2016 manifesto pledge of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the run-up to the December 7, 2016, general election.

The minister stated that just as the government paid the salaries of doctors, nurses, and staff of some mission hospitals in the country, the state would continue to take care of the salaries of teachers in mission schools after the appropriate contract had been signed between the government and the religious bodies.

However, delivering a speech at the 65th-anniversary lecture of the Bishop Herman College on the theme, ‘Investing in Quality Education for National Development' in Accra on Tuesday, Most Rev. Osei-Bonsu said a partnership between the church and government should continue.

“As a church, we still want the partnership with the state. We do not want to turn our public schools into private schools. I know that the parents of the children in the public mission schools pay taxes so the government has the responsibility of paying the teachers in these schools,” he said.

Educating the citizens of a country is the duty of the state, he adds.

Religious organisations have often called on the government to return mission schools to them to manage and supervise.

The Catholic Church has been at the forefront of the call for the state to return the schools to religious bodies.

In 2014, the Christian Council of Ghana said its members were in a position to better maintain schools established by some of the churches in the country and called on the government to release all schools belonging to some of its members to them.

Wesley Girls, Presbyterian Boys’ School, Adisadel College and T.I Ahmadiyya Secondary School are among the top mission schools in the country.