NORTHERN HIGH SCHOOLS POSTPONE RE-OPENING (BACK PAGE)

Story: George Folley Quaye, Wa

THE reopening of the third term for senior high schools in the three northern regions with boarding facilities has been postponed indefinitely, due to the failure of the National Scholarship Secretariat to release funds for the feeding of the students.
As a result, first and second year students who were to report at their schools on April 27, 2008 for the third term are still at home.
The Northern Sector branch of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) has, therefore, appealed to the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports (MoESS) to intervene.
In their petition to the ministry, they stated that as the heads of the affected schools they were appealing to the Scholarship Secretariat and the authorities concerned to expedite action on the release of the grants for the second and third terms to enable schools in the three regions to reopen.
The signatories were Francis Avonsige, (Upper East), Charles Nyabu (Northern) and Moses Donneyoung (Upper West). The petition was addressed to the sector minister, the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service and all the regional directors of education in the three northern regions.
The heads explained that the affected schools managed to feed the students for the first and second term of the academic year by purchasing foodstuffs on credit from suppliers.
They said the credit facilities were made possible when they promised the suppliers that the Scholarship Secretariat would release the feeding grants to the schools to enable heads of such schools pay the bills by the middle of the first term.
“The first term ended on December 14, 2007 without the feeding grants being released by the Scholarship Secretariat. Notwithstanding the breach of faith, heads of these schools went further and persuaded their food suppliers to sell more foodstuffs to them on credit to enable them start the second term, which began on January 7, 2008”, the heads pointed out.
According to them, with no money to run the schools and the foodstuffs suppliers vowing not to give any more credit facilities, they were confronted with the painful choice of asking Form One and Two students to vacate the schools by March 13, 2008 but the secretariat indicated that efforts were being made to get the grants released without delay.
However, they said, the grants were released to cover only the feeding of the students for term one, at the old rate of GH¢72 per student per term instead of the new rate of GH¢80.
They further noted that no grants were paid for the feeding of the students for the whole of term two, which ended on April 5, 2008.
The heads of the schools stressed that these schools were still heavily indebted to food suppliers who had declined to sell their foodstuffs on credit until all the outstanding bills were paid.
“It is in the light of the above development and constraints that schools in the three regions would find it difficult to reopen for the third term of the 2007/08 academic year”, they stated.