The Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) wants the Ghana Education Service (GES) to lift the ban on the collection of Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) dues.
This, according to PIAC, will ameliorate infrastructural development in schools. GES in 2019 suspended the payment of PTA dues under the free Senior High School (SHS) policy, over claims that it was a financial burden on parents.
But PIAC observed in its Free SHS implementation report that the move has deprived many schools of the needed additional infrastructure.
For instance, the PTA of the Presbyterian Boys’ Senior High School, Legon, (PRESEC) has admitted that the ban has stalled major infrastructural projects in the school.
Technical Manager at PIAC, Mark Agyemang on the Point Blank segment of Eyewitness News maintained that the PTAs must be allowed to operate within the school structure albeit as voluntary organizations.
When the Free Secondary Education policy started, there were complaints that schools had been charging PTA levies to cover items like mosquito nets, brooms, hoes and other implements.
Regional and district directors of education have also been put on alert to keep a closer eye on second cycle schools.
According to the GES, this is to enable them to streamline and review all such levies in all second cycle schools.
The Director-General of the GES, Prof. Kwesi Opoku Amankwa, told the Daly Graphic that his outfit was concerned with the proliferation of all manner of levies under the guise of PTA dues.
These levies are defeating the objective of the government in removing cost as a barrier to secondary education in Ghana,” he said
Source:Fiilafmonline/Graphic
