Information gathered indicates that some officials of the Adenta Holy Rosary Catholic Primary and Junior High School are demanding ghc70 (seventy Ghana cedis) from each pupil and student in the school before they are allowed to write the end of term examination.
The school children have also been told they wouldn’t be promoted to the next class should they fail to pay the levies.
Some Angry parents have expressed worry over the situation and called on government to act They could not understand why the little children should be forced to pay extra money when the capitation grant is paid by government to take care of all those things. ‘ Even when we pay the money they don’t give us receipts, so we want government to intervene and sanction people behind it.
Meanwhile, The Ghana Education Service (GES) has cautioned authorities at the various government schools against collecting any unauthorized and/or illegal charges from students. In a letter to Regional Directors, the Director-General, Prof Kwasi Opoku-Amankwah stated that the Service had received several complaints indicating that some school authorities were tasking the students to pay PTA dues and other charges while getting their clearances signed.
“Management of GES wishes to state categorically that under no circumstance should any school authority use the payment of PTA levies or any other unauthorized charges as part of the clearance system for final year students. Anyone who breaches this directive will be sanctioned,” he wrote.
Prof Opoku-Amankwa stated that school authorities are to only surcharge any student who misplaces, damages or defaces any school property.
“However, such charges are levied as per Management’s approved rates given to the schools through the respective Regional Directors in modes and manner so described,” he added.
The Director-General stated that the Regional Directors are expected to act expeditiously to interdict any Head of School or official who is established to be involved in the illegal collection of levies. The Directors are also tasked to conduct full investigations into the matter after such interdiction and submit a report to the Director-General for further action. A report of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) says about 10 per cent of children of school going age absent themselves from school due to their inability to pay some levies or fees.
The report said despite the capitation grant, public schools still levy fees such as examination, extra classes, sports and culture, computer (ICT fees), capital development levies, utility bills (water and electricity) and Parent Teacher Association (PTA) levies.
On the average, the report said a child in the public basic school paid an amount of GH¢45.00 per term whiles in the urban areas such as the Greater Accra Region, a child pays a total of about GH¢200.00 in levies per term.
It said examination fees and collection (offerings) during worship days were very high among all the levies charged and it cuts across through the primary and Junior High Schools (JHS), with as high as GH¢80.00 being paid per child as examination fees in most public schools.
The capitation grant was introduced in 2004 on a pilot basis and was scaled up nationwide in 2005 as a mechanism to lessen the burden of paying fees and levies of parents to achieve the long-term policy objective of equitable access to education by all Ghanaian children.
averagely, the combined levies charged per child in the public schools was over six times the capitation grant of GH¢4.50 per child, the report said.
According to the report, some schools even charged funeral fees from parents and explained that, the rationale for the survey was to ascertain whether the capitation grant was achieving its target of equitable access to education by all children.