19.6 billion cedis Approved for 2004 BECE

Accra, Nov. 5, GNA - The Government would subsidise the cost of conducting the 2004 Basic Certificate of Education Examinations (BECE) to the tune of 19.6 billion cedis as part of efforts to reduce the burden of education financing on parents.

Mr Emmanuel Acquaye, Director for Basic Education Division of the Ghana Education Service, announced this on Wednesday at the second monthly press briefing by the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports and Ghana Education Service (GES) in Accra.

He said the amount represented 70 per cent of the cost of the examinations, explaining that each parent was to pay 100,000 cedis for the examinations but with the subsidy they would have to pay only 30,000 cedis each.

Mr Acquaye said 330,520 candidates were expected to write the examinations.

Mr Aquaye said under the Universal Primary Completion (UPC) the GES expected all children who attended school to complete but this had not be attained because of dropouts and repetitions.

He said the gender parity index for primary school had been moving slowly even though the GES had been targeting a ratio of one to one by the year 2005, explaining that if the trend continued then the target could only be attained in 2015.

Mr Acquaye said a slight increase in the rate of girls' enrolment was needed to achieve the target by 2010 and appealed to the conscience of parents to send their children to school.

He said due to the poverty level of most parents it was not possible to prosecute parents who did not send their children to school.

Mr Acquaye said to address the situation there were on-going interventions to support schools, communities and districts to improve and expand educational infrastructure, enhance community participation in education and to develop and implement strategies that would enhance girls' enrolment, participation, retention and achievement.

Other measures include information, education communication programme, the Whole School Development Programme (WSDP); Quality Improvement In Primary Schools (QUIPS) and the Child School Community Education (CSCE).

Mr A. Wellington, Acting Director for Technical and Vocational Division (TVET) said technical education was capital intensive but previous Governments had played down on their responsibilities for improving it through their inability to provide enough funds for its operations.

He said there were 23 technical institutions operating under the TVET Directorate; however, the budgetary quota for TVET had never gone beyond 0.8 per cent of the total GES budget.

He said over 175.5 billion cedis had been received from donor agencies and over 9.9 billion cedis from Government.

He said the slow progress of the division had come about as a result of neglect during the 1987 educational reform programme to the extent that the Division was abolished.

He said to meet the challenges posed by the rapid technological changes going on, the Directorate had put in place measures to improve the quality of delivery, increase the number of qualified instructors and upgrading the qualification of instructors.

Ms Elizabeth Ohene, Minister in charge of Tertiary Education urged the Technical Division to attract students into the system and so that it could also attract more funding.

Commenting on striking workers of Ghana Library Board, Ms Ohene said many libraries had collapsed, however, efforts were being made to improve the situation of both the workers and the libraries in the country.

She also called on authorities in charge of public schools to create more public confidence in order to attract parents to send their children to their schools.

She said students from both private and public schools could access the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) loan.