Capitation grant needs to be reviewed - NNED official

Tamale, Sept. 16, GNA - Mr Eric Duorinaah the coordinator of the Northern Network for Education Development (NNED), an NGO, has appealed to the government to review the implementation of the capitation fund. He said: "Although the initiative is laudable, it fails to address the needs of the under-privileged since it covers children in public schools without taking into account the social status of their families.

"It would have been ideal if the grant had covered only the underserved communities where parents are very poor", he said and suggested that extra provision should be made for these areas. Mr Duorinaah was speaking at a three-day general assembly meeting of NNED in Tamale on Friday, to review its activities and to draw up strategies to improve educational standards in the three Northern regions.

He said the School Management Committees (SMCs) were not very functional especially in the rural areas, adding that a survey carried out by NNED showed that less than 50 per cent of the SMCs were in place in the rural communities.

The NNED coordinator expressed concern that government had not indicated the contributions of NGOs to the development of education in its annual education sector review report and urged the Education Ministry to address the issue.

The meeting would among other things, reconstitute the fund-raising committee and deliberate on amending the NNED constitution to make it more effective.