All unapproved fees must cease - Education Minister

Prof Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman, Minister of Education, has directed all heads of schools to put a stop to charging their students fees with no reference to the Ghana Education Service (GES) guidelines and approval.

“It is difficult to imagine how many of us would have had secondary education had we studied under the circumstances that we have created, obliging students to carry cash to motivate teachers, levying dues via SRC, form, class, project among others and purchasing all manner of items,” she said

Prof. Opoku-Agyeman was speaking at the 51st Annual Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) at Oyoko in the New Juaben Municipality.

She said all manner of fees charged by schools were outside the ones that appeared on the student’s bill and that it did not serve the education sector well since it created discomfort to parents and students.

Prof. Opoku-Agyeman said her Ministry had set up a committee which had come out with a standardized fee structure for all Senior High Schools, and it would be publicized soon, and urged all the heads to adhere to it to avoid being sanctioned.

He appealed to heads of schools to be disciplined as well as their teachers.

“The time teachers reach the classrooms, the time they expend on tasks, the quality of preparation for classes, the level of knowledge they display, the worth and timeliness of grading and returning students’ assignment, the value of interaction with the students and the atmosphere in which learning occurs are some of the expected areas of concentration of heads,” she said.

She affirmed the government’s commitment to fulfilling its promise of establishing 200 more SHS in the country to achieve the target set to make secondary school education accessible to all citizens, irrespective of their locality.

Prof Reynolds Okine, Rector of the Koforidua Polytechnic, said Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) should be seen as a choice by Junior and Senior High School students and not an alternative to university education.