The Campaign Against Privatisation and Commercialisation of Education (CAPCOE), a not for profit organisation made up of teacher unions has called on the government to provide domestic financing for public basic education in the country.
According to the CAPCOE, the decline in budgetary allocation and inability to release funds to meet real time cost of running schools, poor teacher and education worker motivation, among others is promoting education privatisation and commercialisation in the country.
The convener, Mr Richard Kwashie Kovey, said this at a stakeholder's engagement on domestic financing of basic education organised by CAPCOE in collaboration with Education International with support from Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Accra on Thursday.
The engagement aimed at deliberating and finding alternative ways of improving learning outcomes in public basic schools through adequate investment in classroom infrastructure, teaching and learning resources, teacher motivation, timely release of grants for Pre-tertiary education and ways of resolving challenges confronting the feeding programme in schools.
Mr Kovey said lack of domestic financing for public basic education threaten Ghana's attainment of targets for Sustainable Development Goal four (SDG 4) which aims at ensuring universal access to at least 12 years of foundation education which must be free and easily accessible.
"This is to say the state has sole responsibility of ensuring every single Ghanaian child of school going age is given equal access to educational opportunities irrespective of his/her economic status, geographical location, ethnic or cultural background," he added.
"The passing of Act 947 Earmarked Funds and realignment Act in 2017 that capped all earmarked funds including GETFund; a fund created as a means of domestic financing of education infrastructure at all levels saw a drastically reduced receivables for education infrastructure in the last six years," he said.
Senior Programme Officer, Africa Education Watch, Mr Divine Kpe, in a presentation on the implications of declining budgetary allocation to basic education on national development said the lack of over one million desks in public basic schools caused 2.3 million children to be without writing and sitting places.
