Government’s decision to cut spending on capitation grant and other social interventions hurting education

The amount allocated under the new Social Intervention Programme (SIP) to Education of GH¢102.9 million is not enough to keep up with inflation. This would hurt the positive trend over the last six years or so which has seen more and more children from deprived backgrounds gaining access to education.

The budget for the School Feeding programme has been cut by 8.09% in real terms, from GH¢50m to GH¢45.9m. The Capitation Grant and BECE subsidy have also been slashed this year by 6.79%, from GH¢35.5m to GH¢33m. Also, the budget for free school uniforms and textbooks have been reduced this year by 24.41%, from GH¢12.16m to GH¢9.19m.

In total, the budgetary allocations for social interventions programmes in Education have been cut by 7.88% in real terms and 0.22% in nominal terms. Furthermore, actual allocations from the GETFUND to the Ministry of Education have decreased by 16% (GH¢51.5 million), as compared to 2010 allocations.

The Ministry of Education has a new 10-year Education Strategic Plan, which prioritises cost saving measures and a commitment to enhance public financial management in the sector. While public financial management is necessary, the necessary funding to ensure management efficacy has also suffered.

Typically, for 2011, 96.40% of total Government funding for Education is for personal emoluments, with only 2.03% for administration, 1.42% for services and 0.15% for investment.

To maintain or improve an education system when administration costs are placed at only 2% of the budget is impossible.

Is it not ironic and highly damaging for the destiny of the ordinary Ghanaian child that it has taken a so-called Social Democratic government to cut down on all these critical social programmes for the essential education of our children? Ghana’s future is in building the people’s intellectual property and that prospect is ruined when Government shies away from investing in that developmental project.

QUALITY EDUCATION IN DANGER

While Government and some of its development partners may hold the view that Ghana spends a higher than average African percentage of its GDP on Education, it is obvious that for Ghana to make serious strides towards development and prosperity more and resources must be invested intelligently to enhance significantly the quality of education in Ghana.

So far, however, there appears to be a clear policy of Government to deprioritise and reduce spending on Education, with the obvious consequence of affecting negatively the quality of education. The dangerous consequence of the lack of commitment to the provision of quality education can be felt in the prevailing trend of some 50% of Junior High School pupils failing in their Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and 40% only passing with aggregate 30; more than 60% of JHS students lack basic literacy and numeracy skills. On top of that many Junior High Schools score zero at the BECE.

Even with the 50% who continue to the Senior High School level, a similar number fail to pass the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE).  The grim statistics go on: 70% of students who pass WASSCE do so with more than one sitting. This means, invariably, the overwhelming majority of SHS students would still end up doing an extra year, albeit informal. The elitist structure of a few schools against the rest has ensured that an estimated 80% of entrants into tertiary institutions are from just the top 50 Senior High Schools out of a nationwide total of some 495.

This means that today, less than 10 percent of our young people probably stand any chance of starting their adult life with qualifications good enough for the highly competitive modern job market. To banish 90 percent of this country’s youth to a grim future of uncertainties is a dreadful, wicked and irresponsible way to build a nation.

We cannot continue allowing such a large majority of Ghana’s future leaders to be thrown out onto the streets to face a future pregnant with uncertainties, generated by lack of skills and lack of basic understanding of Mathematics and English.

Unfortunately, there have been no clear policy initiatives to reverse this trend and the absence of no such policy means we are building, here in Ghana, a future of hopelessness.

DISTURBING TREND OF SLASHED FUNDING IN EDUCATION

The Danquah Institute is extremely disturbed by the decision by the Government to slash funding in key Education areas for this year and the apparent gradual return to the situation of negligible funding in 2000. For example, in 2000, only 4.4% of Ghana’s GDP was spent on education. By 2007, this had increased to about 9.1% of an expanded economy. Going by the pre-rebasing GDP, spending on Education in 2010 had been reduced to 7.93% of GDP, going down further to 7.57% in 2011.

The reality becomes starker in dollar terms. In 2000, Ghana spent  $176 million on Education. By 2007, this had incrementally gone up to $1.4 billion. For 2011, the budget for Education is $940,905,000.

DEFICIT OF 21,000 PUPIL-TEACHERS

The lack of focus on quality education is obvious in teaching. Statistics show that for the current academic year, the number of teaching vacancies available was put at 33,185, with nearly 24,000 such vacancies being pupil-teachers. Yet only a total of 8,625 trained teachers were earmarked for the system this academic year. At the basic level, Government approved only 3,000 pupil-teachers to take up jobs. This leaves an unbelievable deficit of 21,000 pupil-teachers.

The details of Education spending show that no budgetary allocations have been made for teacher incentives this year to improve teacher attendance, the completion of schools under trees programme, book and research allowances, the provision of infrastructure for Senior High Schools, and for the rehabilitation and upgrading of all 26 technical schools.

It is estimated that 1005 of kindergarten classrooms and 25% of both primary and junior high school classrooms are in need of major repair. However, budgetary provisions for building works generally go towards the construction of new buildings, leaving existing buildings dilapidating. Equally worrying are the growing cases of inflated cost of construction contracts for education facilities. For example, the construction of a 6-unit classroom block has shot up as much as 150% in some cases from GH¢88,000 in 2008 to as high as GH¢250,000 in 2010.

The Danquah Institute is calling on Government to revise its notes and stop this unhelpful trend of deprioritising spending on Education and to focus on quality education. We are going nowhere by ignoring this hopeless phenomenon of banishing some estimated 90% of the children of this country to a future of gross uncertainties.

The author is the Executive Director of the Danquah Institute. He may be reached via This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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