Minister of Education, Mathew Opoku Prempeh, has urged Parents Teachers Associations (PTAs) within Ghana’s educational system to shift their focus from dues collection to demanding accountability from the schools on the quality of education and their learning outcomes.
He made the appeal on Friday, March 15, 2019, when he met with national executives of PTAs in his office in Accra.
Commenting on the meeting, the minister said in a statement, “I also stated that the priority of the PTA should shift from dues collection to demanding accountability from the schools on the quality of education and their learning outcomes.”
He bemoaned that “sadly, PTA has now become synonymous to money collection and this should not be the case.”
He added that “the first thing I made clear to the organisation was that under Article 176 of the 1992 Constitution monies that are collected through a public institution (and in this context, PTA dues taken from students) automatically become public funds and are subject to the management and decisions of government.”
According to him, “Therefore, if the dues are continually collected through students, the use of the funds was subject to the approval of government.”
The minister added that “I charged the PTA to rearrange their priorities, focus on how they can get the best out of teachers, engage and partner the Ghana Education Service (GES) to improve accountability in schools and rebrand the entire PTA from a levy collecting association to a strong body that puts schools on their toes to perform as expected.”
He stated that “the members assured us that they are working on a new operational strategy and that the council is far advanced in setting up a new national payment system where all monies will be collected and disbursed to various schools to cater for specifics.”
Source: Daily Guide
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. |
When things has fallen apart in our educational system. The best person to hold responsible is always the teacher. SHS certificate holders are teaching in the private schools and yet pupils pass. Have we as a country slept over this? Mr. Minister, tell the government to stop politicising our schools. Let the technocrats in the Educational system finds a lasting solution to this problem and stop alwayd blaming the teacher. Do you think teaching amd learninh is just abt the govt supplying lesson notes and chalk, teacher writing lincensure exams. Look around urself and look at pupils learning in classrooms you wouldnt urinate there, sitting on floors and deskes with no seats, parents waking up early and leaving their kids behind for them to dress themselves to come to school, pupils coming to school on an empty stomach till school feeding is ready. Ghana is way pass these challenges. So let the teacher think.
The government is destroying the quality of education through the shift system of SHS but urging PTA to demand quality from teachers. Minister you stop this hypocritical attitude
Well done minister. GOD BLESS U. PTA sika d33 nkoa. I know a school in Cape coast they've being collecting money from parents for constructing boreholes, but they've never never construct one po
Minister, God bless you. You get sense paa. Monies collected on behalf of any state institution is government money and as such government should determine its use. I would also implore you to open accounts for all PTA dues for individual schools to enable payments to be made into those accounts. In other words, parents should pay monies directly into that account to ensure accountability. Also, some teachers use government time, furniture, electricity, etc for private classes at the expense of the normal classes for which they are paid. Kindly ban all private classes from being organized in government schools. It deprives the "proper students" of the school from benefiting from the Free SHS as teacher's attention shifts to the private students. Ask teachers to either abide by these two "laws" leave to set up their private schools. Enough is enough. They are at the same time condemning free shs. Then set up your own school and operate it your own way.