BUDGET: Education Gets Highest Allocation

The government will spend 1,420.22 trillion cedis to the educational sector for the 2001 fiscal year. This is the highest allocation compared to all sector ministries in the 2001 budget, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Minister of Finance, announced on Friday when he presented the 2001 budget to parliament.

He said 6.41 billion cedis has been provided to support girl- child education programmes in primary schools while an additional 413.8 million cedis has been provided for the conduct of science, technology and mathematics programmes for those at the senior secondary school level. He said in order to bridge the gap of enhancement in education between rural and urban, programmes such as provision of incentives to teachers, in-service training for teachers, curriculum review and development and financial support for proven needy basic schoolgirls would be undertaken.

Mr Osafo-Maafo said to achieve quality teaching and learning under the FCUBE programme, a new concept known as Whole School Development (WSD) has been designed which will expose teachers to current methodologies and skills. Some 20,000 basic education teachers will benefit this year.

He said government would focus on the provision of infrastructural facilities in schools, especially in rural areas, expanding existing ones, providing housing for teachers and procuring classroom furniture.

The Finance Minister announced that a total of four billion cedis has been provided for the completion of 20 Vocational and Technical Resource Centres and provision of modern equipment and plant facilities for them to improve the skills of students.

At the tertiary level, major rehabilitation and earmarked construction works will continue in a bid to expand the facilities, especially at the University of Ghana (Chemistry block), construction of lecture halls at University of Cape Coast and improvement in the water systems at the University for Development Studies.

Others include the construction and rehabilitation works on lecture theatres for engineering, pharmacy and Institute for Mining and Mineral Engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, while polytechnics at Wa and Bolgatanga will be expanded to admit more students.

Mr Osafo-Maafo said the Education Trust Fund would be used to provide support for development and maintenance of essential academic facilities and infrastructure and supplement funding for grants of scholarships to gifted but needy students.