Civil Society Organisation (CSOs) and education stakeholders have restated their calls for an increase in the budgetary allocation to education.
They proposed a jump from the current 12 per cent to at least 15 per cent of the total national budget, using the supplementary budget window.
The CSOs called for the prioritization of the disbursement of allocated 'discretionary' education budget to increase the low budget execution to at least hundred per cent by the end of the current financial year.
The anticipated budgetary increment, which amounts to over GHS 4.3 billion, they said, should, as a matter of urgency and necessity, be allocated to augment the hugely underfunded basic education goods and services budgets, and construct 5,000 school buildings to replace those under trees, sheds, and dilapidated structures.
The CSOs included STAR-Ghana Foundation, Africa Education Watch, Action Aid, Ghana CSOs Platform on SDGs, CAMFED, Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC), World Vision, International Child Development Programme (ICDP), Coalition for Concerned Teachers (CCT), Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT).
STAR-Ghana Foundation and the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) are implementing the Civil Society Strengthening Programme/Shift the Power (CSSP/StP) with funding from Comic Relief and the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
The eight-year programme seeks to build institutional resilience of civil society organisations in Ghana by providing a more progressive, negotiated, participatory and widely owned solution to social development work.
At a press conference to address issues in the Basic Education Sector, Mrs Joyce Larnyoh, Convenor for SDG Four on Education, on behalf of the CSOs, said primarily, the result of poor financing of public basic education over the years, had affected access and quality of education.
The CSOs said, since 2012, when 27 per cent of the total national budget - the equivalent of seven per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was spent on education, the financing trend had declined to only 12 per cent budgetary allocation in 2023.
It was the equivalent of only three per cent of GDP in the face of a growing economy and population.
The CSOs, therefore, indicated that the introduction of free senior secondary education, which had impacted access and transition, had taken a significant portion of already declining funding to the education sector.
Resultantly, they said, basic education's share of the education sector's discretionary expenditure declined from 18 per cent in 2014 to six per cent in 2020, and further to four per cent in 2023.
The declining allocation, the CSOs noted, was worsened by low budget execution for discretionary expenditure, due to poor disbursement of allocated funds, which averaged 55 per cent by September 2022 for the 2023 financial year.
On Capitation Grant, the CSOs said, in 2019, the Government announced an increment in the grant amount to GH? 10.00 and that over the years, increasing inflation had reduced its real value from five exercise books in 2019 to only two exercise books in 2023.
'Even more disturbing is the untimely disbursement, as the Grant remains in arrears of almost two (2) years,' they said, emphasising that the poor financing of basic education had adverse effect on the management and delivery of teaching and learning, accounting for the poor learning outcomes recorded in public basic schools.
Therefore, the CSOs asked the Government to diversify the financing source for the Capitation Grant to include the Annual Budget Funding Amount, which was more reliable, while benchmarking its annual increment with annual inflation data.
The Civil Society Organisations said the poor financing of feeding grants for Special Schools and the Ghana School Feeding Programme Feeding grants for Special Schools were in arrears for almost two years, creating severe challenges for managers of Special Schools.
Similarly, 'the Ghana School Feeding Programme is also in arrears of a year, forcing many caterers to boycott cooking for pupils. Beyond the delayed disbursement and arrears, the recently proposed increase in budgetary allocation to the Ghana School Feeding Programme from 0.97 pesewas to 1.20 pesewas is unrealistic and cannot provide lunch for pupils at a time Senior High Schools who receive a budget of GHS 3 per pupil for lunch are even complaining about inadequate feeding budgets,' the CSOs added.
They said, it was unacceptable, the concern about the medium-term expenditure projection of the Ministry of Finance to cut the Ghana School Feeding Budget by 25 per cent in 2025 as it could lead many poor children to drop out of school.
They called on the Government to disburse approved funds for financing arrears and the current cost of feeding in special schools and under the Ghana School Feeding programme with an additional allocation made in the 2023 supplementary budget to augment the inadequacies.
Source: Ghana News Agency