Parliamentary committee condemns high school fees

Tamale, May 10, GNA - The Parliamentary Accounts Committee has condemned the rising incidence of high school fees being charged by some schools in the northern part of the country which it said had the tendency of defeating the purpose of the free education policy of the government.

The committee said the high fees had the tendency of throwing a lot of students out of school and that it could also increase the cost of education in the country making education to become the preserve of the highest bidder.

It noted that if parents could pay school fees as high as GH300, then there was no need for the government to continue its free educational policy to the area.

The committee said this in Tamale on Monday after sitting with some schools on the Auditor General's Report from 2004 to 2007. It will be sitting for three days to examine the accounts of 42 pre-tertiary schools in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions. The committee is non-partisan and comprises members of both majority and the minority in parliament.

Mr. Albert Kan-Dapaah, the Chairman of the committee, urged all public institutions to abide by all legal and professional accounting principles when handling public funds adding that good governance demanded respect for human rights and the rule of law. He said the heads of those institutions would be answering questions relating to lapses in their expenditure of funds and possibly institute sanctions.

First to appear before the 45-member committee was the Navrongo Senior High School where the Headmaster, Mr. Patrick Tangoyire, was blamed for his inability to retrieve text books release to students. He said in his response that almost all the books had been retrieved remaining 35, two of which were still with some teachers who had travelled abroad.

The Bawku Technical Institution was blamed for charging ridiculous and high school fees of GHc300 which the committee observed most parents in those areas could not afford.

The Headmaster, Mr. Linus Gamour Tuuli, said those fees and levies were approved by the Ghana Education Service. He said the fees were approved during the last meeting of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) that allowed all schools to charge GHc300 school fees and stated that some schools were even charging higher.

The Bawku Technical Institute was also blamed for its failure to submit its audit reports of 2007 to the Auditor General. Most of the other schools that appeared before the committee were blamed for making payments without supporting documents and urged the schools to ensure they did the right thing to avoid funds going waste or into individual's pockets.