The Africa Education Watch popularly known as the Eduwatch has said that currently there are over 5,000 schools under trees 4,500 primary schools without JHS across the country. The Eduwatch has reminded the Ministry of Education about the above subject after the whooping sum of GH¢34.8 million has been used to purchase a set of past questions for 2021 WASSCE candidates.
According to Eduwatch, these are wrong priorities made by the government because there are more pressing issues in the education sector that need to be looked at.
In an excerpt posted by the Eduwatch and intercepted by Educandghana, they indicated that Africa ranks 2nd globally in terms of its 5% GDP allocation to education, but ranks last in pre-tertiary spending efficiency. If Africa’s spending efficiency increases from an average of 50% to the level of Latin America (Average 75%) its primary school completion rate would increase from 79% to 97% (AfDB, 2020).
According to the education giant, with Ghana’s Basic School Completion Rate of about 80%, they revealed that until the government achieves high levels of spending efficiency in the education sector and makes COMPETITIVE TENDERING the norm, not much will change.
They also revealed that, currently, there are 5,000 schools under trees, 4,500 primary schools without JHS contributing to high dropouts currently at 20%, students without desks, and teachers without basic accommodation are all the outcomes of ‘justified’ inefficient spending overtime.
The organization, therefore, urged that government must change its way of spending “We must depart from the old-fashioned culture of Justifying Spending Inefficiency to discouraging same”, they added.
