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GNA Feature, By Charles Koomson
Sunyani (B/A) March 15, Ghanadot/GNA – A number of popular schools of
thought have attempted to define education from different
perspectives but all agree that education is the greatest
explosive force that could effect desirable social human
development.
This buttresses the assertion that learning is said to have
taken place when there is a change in behaviour and since
the school is the institution responsible for teaching and
learning, its role in human development cannot be
over-emphasized.
From Wikipedia encyclopedia, schools existed as far as back
as Greek times if not earlier. Islam was one of the earliest
cultures to develop a schooling system in the modern sense
of the word as it puts a lot of emphasis on knowledge and
had to develop a systematic way of teaching and spreading
knowledge in purpose-built structures.
At first the mosque combined both religious performance and
learning activities, but by the tenth century the Seljuks
introduced the first school or Madrassa as it was called in
Arabic, a proper school built independently of the mosque.
They were also the first to make the school or Madrassa
system of a public domain under the control of the Caliph.
The Nizamiyya Madrassa is considered by consensus of
scholars to be the earliest surviving school, built towards
1066 CE Emir Nizam Al-Mulk.
Under the Ottomans, learning was given a new dimension as
towns of Bursa and Edirne took over as the main centers of
learning respectively. The Ottoman system of Kulliye, a
building complex containing a mosque, a hospital Madrassa,
and public kitchen and dinning areas, was indeed
revolutionary making the learning accessible to a wider
public through its free meals, health care and sometimes
free accommodation.
In Europe during the Middle Ages and much of the early
modern period, the main purpose of schools (as opposed to
universities) was to teach the Latin language. This led to
the term grammar school, which in the United States is used
informally to refer to a primary school but in the United
Kingdom means a school that selects entrants on their
ability or aptitude.
Following this, the school curriculum was gradually
broadened to include literacy in the vernacular language as
well as technical, artistic, scientific and practical
subjects.
The size and scope of schools varies depending on the
recourses and goals of the communities that provide for
them. A school might be simply an outdoor meeting where one
teacher comes to instruct a few students, or, alternatively,
a large campus consisting of hundreds of buildings and tens
of thousands of students and educators.
The basic unit of a school building is generally the
classroom, where the act on instruction takes place. Other
places typically found in schools include, a cafeteria,
sporting facilities, auditorium, offices, library and
laboratories. Boarding schools where students live full-time
among their peers also include dormitories.
Most modern states consider it a duty of the government to
provide at least a basic education to the children of its
citizens. For this reason, many schools are owned or funded
by states. Private schools are those, which are operated
independently from the government. Private schools usually
rely on fees paid by families whose children attend the
school for funding; however, sometimes such schools also
receive government support.
Many private schools are affiliated with a particular
religion; these are known as parochial schools in the United
States of America.
In the UK most schools are publicly funded and are known as
state schools or maintained schools in which tuition if
provided free. There are also private schools or independent
schools that charge fees. Some of the most selective
expensive schools are private. (Wikipedia Encyclopedia).
In Ghana our history of education has seen the missionary
institutions, the local authority schools and private
schools, all coexisting. At the basic level the most
expensive but also the most sought after schools are
private, giving rise to the general and sometimes erroneous
belief that private schools are profit-making business
enterprises that need no support.
This is not only hypothetical but has unfortunately led to
the sidelining, neglect and discrimination against the
sector as, if even they are, it is not any justifiable basis
for subjecting the children in particular and the
institution in general to selective and discriminatory
ordeals, considering their immense contribution to the human
resource development of the country, the core of development
of the economy and indeed the development of any country.
This stance of the state runs contrary to the nation’s much
trumpeted pride of being the first country in the world to
ratify the United Nations Convention on children’s rights.
Private schools form 20 per cent of basic schools and
contribute more than 60 per cent of the total intake into
the so-called endowed second cycle schools but government
policies are seriously skewed against them.
Were it not the number of private schools in urban areas and
their enrolment levels, many children of school going-age
would be roaming the streets because public schools are
already bursting at their seams with increased intake as a
result of government interventions like the school feeding,
free bussing and the capitation grant programmes.
Even if the public schools absorbed such children, the
already lack-lustre standard of education in such schools
would fall to abysmal levels. In the face of economic
constraints facing many parents, the recovery rate of school
fees is not optimum, thereby disabling private schools to
pay and motivate their teachers adequately, leading to high
turnover of their experienced teachers.
The frustration of private schools is due to the denial,
discriminatory and exclusionist state policies that
eliminate them from almost all state funded educational
programmes and interventions for teachers and students.
Policies as the long distance learning facility for pupils
teachers, national best teacher award scheme (if criteria
for reward is the end product of work), selective supply of
government logistics and inputs from the GETFUND, selective
award of government scholarship to learners, exclusion from
state sponsored recreational and academic competitions and
last but not the least the denial of the capitation grant to
the children and their parents who together with the
proprietors and teachers, all pay taxes to the state from
which all the above-named state facilities are provided to
public schools.
The impending education reforms, which the Ghana Education
Service is preparing their teachers for, to the exclusion of
private schools who are even prepared to pay, has the
potential to spell disaster for the education enterprise in
Ghana.
The Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) is
not asking for the impossible as it is aware of state
interventions to other private institutions like the supply
of doctors, nurses and inputs to private and mission
hospitals.
There is also the support given to the Offuman Agricultural
Project where a former best national farmer’s farm has been
turned into a state extension service center.
If the state recognizes education as the vehicle for
economic growth and national development and it is the
private schools that produce the cream of the national human
resource base, then this discrimination, neglect and
non-recognition should be a call for action.
A call that many Ghanaians, including high profile
government official as Mr. Fosuabah Mensah Banahene,
Administrator of GETFUND, have publicly asked private
schools to dialogue with government for the removal of such
discrimination.
In response to these wake up calls from well meaning
Ghanaians, GNAPS, in a BUSAC-funded advocacy action, is
dialoging with the Ministry of Education, Science and
Sports, the Ghana Education Service, Parliamentary Select
Committee on Education, Youth and Sports, Ministry of
Private Sector Development and Presidential Special
Initiatives (PSI) and the Ministry of Manpower, Youth and
Employment for the removal of all the inhibitions,
discrimination and limitations for a better delivery of
quality education.
Mr. Kwame Pianim, chairman of the Public Utilities
Regulatory Commission, said in a news item broadcast on Joy
FM radio station on February 26, this year that every child,
whether in the public or private school deserves to benefit
from the capitation grant and GETFUND.
Speaking at the sixth anniversary and prize-giving day of
Action Secondary Technical School in Accra, he emphasized
that education is a major tool that
can push the economy forward.
He therefore urged the government to assist the private
sector to contribute towards providing education for all
children since the public schools are not enough.
Mr. Pianim argued that the country’s population since
independence had increased several fold, which had made it
difficult for the government alone to shoulder the burden of
funding education.
“Government alone cannot shoulder that responsibility and
therefore when private individuals are helping, the
impression should not be given that society and the
government are not appreciative of the private sector.
“So for example if you take the capitation grant and the
school feeding programmes, after they extend it to all the
public schools, I will like to believe that it will be
extended to the private schools because it doesn’t matter
whether the child is in a privately owned school or public
school, they are all children of this country and we owe
them the duty of educating them”.
The Director of the school, Mr. James Amankwah, also
appealed to the government to support private schools to
enable them to improve the quality of education such schools
provided.
GNA
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