Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, an education policy, Kofi Asare, has asked Ghana Education Service to depart from what he described as an archaic culture of limited disclosure to one of disclosure.

Reacting to the brouhaha surrounding the unapproved prospectus and the warning issued by the GES, he wondered why the GES had refused to release the approved prospectus.

He is asking how the GES would convince parents that the demand for A4 sheets and other items from students did not come from them.

”How does the GES convince parents that, it did not deliberately allow SHS to demand A4 and foolscap reams, electric bulbs, boxes of white board markers, weedicides, car dusters, garbage bins etc because government has always failed to provide SHSs funds to procure those items when they were needed?

In a particular school, the list of unapproved items was in excess of GHC 1,300, more than how much government spends on a SHS boarding student in a semester", he explained.

Read the full post he shared on Facebook below

The Ghana Education Service has an approved SHS prospectus but wont make it public, making it easier for many SHS to extort parents?

The Nkansah led management must depart from this archaic culture of limited disclosure to one of limited non-disclosure, if they are genuinely interested in transforming that institution.

How does the GES convince parents that, it did not deliberately allow SHS to demand A4 and foolscap reams, electric bulbs, boxes of white board markers, weedicides, car dusters, garbage bins etc because government has always failed to provide SHSs funds to procure those items when they were needed?

In a particular school, the list of unapproved items was in excess of GHC 1,300, more than how much government spends on a SHS boarding student in a semester.

Merely warning SHS heads in public after a public outcry, when it is obvious almost NO SCHOOL respected your so-called approved prospectus could rather smack of a subtle conspiracy.

Better crack the whip!

The GES should cause defaulting SHS heads to return all A4 and foolscap reams, electric bulbs, boxes of white board markers, weedicides, car dusters, garbage bins, etc to parents within days, rather than issuing threats to erring employees.

The GES should publish the approved prospectus to provide a respite for parents who are still struggling to raise funds to fully finance the unapproved prospectus.

Government cannot run a free SHS policy where it absorbs about GHC 2,000 per student, per year, with the aim of removing financial barriers to access, only for parents to be greeted with a GHC 6,000 prospectus with a much stronger potential to exclude the poor.

Did we go or come? Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum