Cancel feeding fees of teacher education colleges - NGO

A civil society organization called the Centre for Development and Policy Advocacy in Ghana (CEDEPA-Ghana) has suggested the need for government to scrub the feeding fees charged by public Colleges of Education throughout the country.

The organization is convinced that scrubbing the feeding fees will cut down the rising school fees charged by public Colleges of Education.

The organization’s investigation uncovered that presently, the teacher trainees are paying a feeding fee of Ghc500 each term, which alone constituted about 40 percent of the entire admission fee for the 2013/14 academic year.

This suggestion came at the back of growing calls for government to rescind its decision of withdrawing teacher trainee allowances.

The organization’s Executive Director, Mr. Ziblim Alhassan, in an interview with Citi News recommended the introduction of a day-system in the public Colleges of Education to ease the growing pressure on the limited boarding facilities.

He implied, “We came to this conclusion following a recent study on how government could cut down the rising school fees in the public Colleges of Education; we are of the view that in light of the recent cancellation of the teacher trainees’ allowances, the above drastic measures when implemented will help to mitigate the adverse effects of the policy on the well-being of the teacher trainees.”

Mr. Ziblim added, “Our findings show that the students will be better off if they are allowed to feed themselves and to choose voluntarily either to stay in the boarding house or enroll as day students.”

It will be recalled that during the latter part of last year, some teacher trainees in northern Ghana staged a demonstration to protest government’s withdrawal of their allowances.

They argued that the measure will impact negatively on their academic work since a significant number of them, particularly those from poor and deprived backgrounds, survived on the allowances.

President Mahama in Accra at the 4th quadrennial national delegates’ conference of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) defended government’s decision to withdraw the allowances.

President Mahama estimated that the withdrawal will increase student enrolment into public Colleges of Education.