Accra, July 20, GNA - Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) on Tuesday launched a research booklet on Tracking Capitation Grant in Public Primary Schools in Ghana.

The 114-page booklet focuses on global context of educational reforms, education for all in Africa, educational policies in Ghana, context for abolition of school fess and capitation grant in Africa, impact of school fees abolition and capitation grant in Africa and problems associated with implementation of school fess abolition.

Other topics included abolition of school fees and capitation grant in Ghana, structure of the capitation grant implementation, enrolment trends and challenges to education, trends in enrolment at the basic school level, findings on the implementation of capitation grant scheme and capitation grant allocations and disbursement from districts to recipient schools.

The book, a research project of CDD-Ghana was on "Tracking Public Resources Leakage in Education," with particular focus on the capitation grant sought to establish the extent of leakage in the disbursement process.

The survey established that general enrolment levels had increased after introduction of the capitation grant; while challenges to education in communities continued to persist in spite of implementation of the grant for the past five years and irregular means of releasing the grant.

In addition, it established poor record keeping trend, inadequacy and constant delays in the releasing of the grant, and lack of transparency in the disbursement process.

Speaking to newsmen at the media launch in Accra, Mr Kojo Asante, CDD-Ghana Programme Officer, said the public expenditure tracking study was to trail possible leakages and inefficiencies in the disbursement and usage of capitation grant in 30 public primary schools in the 2008 and 2009 academic year.

He said the study provided empirical evidence on leakages from the Ghana Education Services (GES) through the District Education Units to the service delivery points.

"The leakages tend to be more pervasive with the transfer between district and schools.the level of leakages cut across both endowed and underprivileged schools," Mr Asante said.

The survey revealed that "there was no difference in the accounting practices and application of capitation resources for School Performance Improvement Programmes (SPIPs) of schools that piloted the programme and those that came on board with the scaling up to cover the entire country".

It established that schools with effective Parent/Teacher Associations and School Management Committees used capitation grant resources more effectively or for the intended purposes than those with weak systems.

The survey was conducted in eight public primary schools from the Western Region representing the costal belt, 12 from Ashanti Region representing the forest belt and 10 from the Northern Region representing the Savannah belt.