Accra, Sept. 9, GNA - The Ministry of Education and Sports on Friday asked all head teachers who had not yet opened bank accounts for their schools to do so before re-opening of schools on Tuesday September 13, 2005.

The Ministry further directs all districts, municipal and metro assemblies to liaise with District Directors of Education to ensure that the monies were paid directly into the various schools' accounts immediately.

These directives were contained in a statement issued by the Ministry to make for easy distribution and utilization of capitation grants to the various schools.

The guidelines signed by Mrs. Angelina Baiden-Amissah, Deputy Minister Basic and Teacher Education, said the capitation grant had been designed to empower the schools to effectively use financial resources to plan and carry out school quality improvement activities such as enrolment drives, provision of teaching and leaning materials, minor repairs, among others.

The Capitation grant scheme commences this academic year with every basic school receiving an amount of 30,000 cedis per pupil.

According to the statement government had already released to the Ghana Education Service 95 billion cedis to cover the 2005/6 academic year, out of which the GES had made available 47.5 billion cedis to public basic schools nationwide through the District Assemblies. The other half would be released when new figures for enrolment were made available after schools reopen for the academic year, the statement added.

Headteachers and Staff of the schools were also been requested to prepare School Performance Improvement Plan with the approval of the School Management Committee, which would oversee its implementation and then forwarded to the District Director of Education for review and approval.

To ensure the effective management of the grants, request for funds are to be endorsed by both the SMC chairman and the headteacher. Monitoring groups to be composed at the Metropolitan Municipal and District as well as the Community level are to visit each school twice a term and report to the District Education Office. The statement appealed to all key players to cooperate to ensure the smooth and effective implementation of the guidelines.