School for Life raised issues with the 2023 budgetary allocation to the basic education sector. This was contained in a statement issued by School for Life and copied to the Ghana News Agency after a review of the budgetary allocation to the basic education sector.
Also, the Parliamentary select committee on education was petitioned. Kindly read the petition below.
A delegation from SfL met with the parliamentary select committee during their monthly committee meetings with majority of the membership present. Discussions focused on the infrastructural deficits in most of the communities across the 5 regions of the north, and the gaps in terms of government financing of the CBE programme.
Similar issues were raised in a meeting with the Deputy Minister of Education Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, and some Technical Advisors at the Ministry of Education.
The Discussions with the stakeholders have been very positive.
They expressed excitements for these kinds of engagements and indicated their commitments to take actions on the issues raised. The MoE for instance highlight the plans that underway to address the school infrastructure deficits across the country. The ministry also assured SfL of their continuous support to the course of CBE implementation in the country and pledged to bring to reality Government pledge of allocating 1% of the basic education budget to CBE financing in the country.
The Parliamentary Select Committee on its part gave the assurance that, they will engage the Minister of Education on the status of the CBE financing. They also promised to engage the relevant stakeholder on the development of a comprehensive basic education infrastructure policy to ensure a more equitable provision of school infrastructure in the country.
The baseline assessment among other things established the state of affairs of education delivery in the project districts. The key issues of focus were; the few number and weak capacity of citizen groups to demand accountability from district education authorities, , low awareness levels of citizen groups about relevant educational policies and structures, weak understanding of educational policies, working relationships between citizens and education sector structures (duty bearers) at the district level and community levels.
KEY SUCCESSES
Mobilization of a total of 180 citizens groups including youth groups across 60 communities from the six (6) operation districts, who have already started documenting the varied issues that affect quality education provision in these districts.
Partners also reflected and shared ideas on ways to overcome public sector institutional bureaucracy and to engender friendly spaces for engagement with the duty bearers.