On Monday June 10, Eduwatch and IFEST Ghana petitioned the Ministry of Education (MoE) and Parliament to instruct the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) to cease the ongoing Foreign Scholarship Application Process. This was occasioned by an advertisement by GETFund for Foreign Masters Scholarship Applications, when the Scholarship Secretariat is running same, albeit with financial challenges.

Eduwatch and IFEST, in their petition, outlined reasons to justify why it is unconscionable, among others, to spend about GHC 400,000 on one persons Foreign Masters Programme when 95 per cent of programmes offered under non-bilateral Foreign Masters Scholarship are available locally. Considering the cost of one Foreign Masters Scholarship can sponsor 20 to 40 local scholarships for the same programme in a Ghanaian university, the Organizations deemed it a wasteful expenditure, especially with Ghana being in a period of economic austerity occasioned by higher taxes and expenditure rationalisation.

The two organisations called on the Minister of Education to halt the activity, and further called on Parliament to injunct the intention by GETFund, adding that the entire endeavor is low on Value For Money and spending efficiency.

The full petition can be accessed via the link below:
https://africaeducationwatch.org/publication/stop-plans-to-award-foreign-masters-scholarships-now

© Africa Education Watch

Eduwatch, from June 11 to 13, provided training on Gender Transformative Education (GTE) and Green Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) for youth groups from the northern, middle and southern zones of Ghana. The workshop was organized by the Foundation for Security and Development in Africa (FOSDA) and Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch) with support from OXFAM, to enhance the capacity of participants as GTE advocates.

Senior Programme Officer at Eduwatch, and resource person for the workshop - Divine Kpe, highlighted key issues that negatively affect boys and girls’ school experiences in Ghana, including gender insensitive pedagogy and discipline, school-related gender based violence, imbalance in male and female teacher deployment among basic schools, distance to school, and gendered school roles, which GTE seeks to address by challenging gender norms and power imbalances in and through education.

Participants were further exposed to youth-led advocacy approaches towards attaining a GTE system in Ghana. Ultimately, the participants, grouped into three (southern, middle and southern zones), were guided to design GTE advocacy strategies for implementation in selected districts in their zonal areas.

Additionally, participants were sensitized on the impact of Climate Change on various trade areas in Ghana, trade areas’ impact on the climate, and the need to promot Green practices in Ghana’s TVET system. To influence the ongoing TVET Policy design, the participants co-created a Model Green TVET Policy framework which will be submitted to the TVET Policy Technical Working Group for consideration.

Participants in the workshop were drawn from KNUST, Kumasi Youth Network, Ashanti Youth Network, Greater Accra Youth Network, Ghana National Disability Network and YEfL

© Africa Education Watch

Civil society organizations (CSOs) operating in the education sector have called for an immediate halt to all foreign master’s programme scholarships.

Their position is in response to an advertisement by the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) calling for applications for foreign master’s programme scholarships, which the CSOs described as a waste of taxpayers’ scarce resources.

According to the CSOs, including Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch) and the Institute for Education Studies (IFEST-Ghana), the action by GETFund is illegal, a deviation from its original mandate and inconsistent with the limited scholarship role it has been authorised to perform; hence the need to stop the exercise.

Citing Section two (2b) of the GETFund Act, 2000 (Act 581), the CSOs highlighted that the fund is to provide supplementary funding to the National Scholarship Secretariat for granting scholarships so brilliant but needy students can study at second cycle level and accredited tertiary institutions in Ghana – not to directly administer foreign scholarships.

IFEST holds the strong conviction that access to finance is increasingly becoming the greatest barrier to tertiary education as the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF) is unresponsive to the needs of students. The SLTF has failed to provide financial assistance for needy students to access tertiary education because it’s grossly underfunded, preventing about 30 percent of applicants from accessing the loan.

The current average student loan amount of GH₵2,250 a year cannot cover the cost of funding tertiary education in Ghana for just the first month of study, let alone the entire year; but students have no option but to manage.

However, GETFund is willing to support the average cost of a one-year foreign Masters scholarship worth GH₵400,000. “For GETFund to even conceive the idea of awarding foreign Masters’ scholarships in Ghana today is unconscionable,” stated Peter Anti, Executive Director of IFEST.

With the 2023 Gross Tertiary Enrollment (GTE) rate stated to be 19.2 percent amid a 34 percent secondary-tertiary transition rate, especially when Ghana is recording an unprecedented 60 percent WASSCE pass rate in Core Subjects, the Ministry of Education (MoE) must be concerned about the inability of senior high school graduates to further their education due to financial challenges.

The MoE must also be worried that Ghana’s set target to achieve 40 percent GTE by 2030 – as announced in 2018 – after five years has only moved up by three percent from the previous 16.97 percent.

“The decision to spend scarce education sector resources on foreign scholarships for Masters’ students who end up studying courses existing in Ghana is not only wasteful but does not represent prioritised spending in a sector with over 5,000 basic schools under trees, sheds and dilapidated structures in the 21st century,” Executive Director-Eduwatch Kofi Asare stated.

Foreign Scholarships and ‘Value for Money’

A review of non-bilateral public foreign scholarships in Ghana indicates that over 95 percent of the programmes are not only available locally in Ghanaian universities but cost 20 times more to study abroad. This does not assure value for money and must be discouraged, in line with President Nana Akufo-Addo’s pledge to protect the public purse.

Why Parliament Must Oppose the Move

The CSOs have also called on parliament to issue an injunction on the move to stop GETFund, as it did not allocate such an expenditure in its 2024 budgetary allocation.

They explained that parliament, in March 2024, approved a GH₵3.9billion allocation to GETFund based on a specific distribution formula that did not include GETFund scholarships. Plans by GETFund to spend directly on foreign scholarships in 2024/25 are therefore outside approved expenditure items in the 2024 GETFund formula approved by parliament, and are thus illegal.

“We urge parliament to prevent GETFund from spending on foreign scholarships, not just because it is unapproved by parliament but also amounts to wasteful spending of taxpayers’ money,” they stated.

The CSOs have also urged the Minister for Education, Yaw Osei Adutwum, to instruct GETFund to cease the ongoing foreign scholarship application process.

Auditor-General on GETFund

It should be recalled that the Auditor-General, in the 2019 GETFund Performance Audit Report, recommended that GETFund abide by Section two (2b) of the GETFund Act, desist from administering foreign scholarships and rather transfer funds to the Scholarship Secretariat for administration of scholarships.

This recommendation of the Auditor-General, which has since 2020 been upheld by GETFund, must continue.

Source: thebftonline.com

The Akufo-Addo administration has since 2020:
1. Made the free Senior High School (SHS) law in Section 3 of the Pre-Tertiary Education Act, 2020 (Act 1049);

The UNSDCF, which is being implemented from 2023-2025, was signed on 28 April 2023 to galvanise progress on the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Ghana.

2. Made the free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (fCUBE) law in Section 2 of Act 1049;

3. Mandated the Ghana Education Service (GES) and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Service to implement basic, secondary and TVET policies and programmes of the Ministry of Education (MoE) under Act 1049;

4. Passed the Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023) to affirm the mandates of the National Teaching Council (NTC), National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), National Schools Inspectorate Authority (NaSIA), Commission for TVET (CTVET) and Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) as regulators;

5. Passed the Complementary Education Agency Act, 2020 (Act 1055) to establish the Complementary Education Agency (CEA) to handle Complementary Education, including Complementary Basic Education (CBE).

Having done these, the author respectfully opines that, the next strategic legislative reform activity in the last 6 months of the Akufo-Addo administration should be to:

1. Develop Legislative Instruments (LI) to provide the requisite operational frameworks for properly implementing these new laws;

And with the permission of time,

2. Amend the West African Examination Council (WAEC) Act to deal with the modern dynamics of the ever increasing examinations fraud that continues to threaten the credibility of secondary education assessment in Ghana. WAEC and Eduwatch have been begging for 4 years.

Exerting last minute energy on another law for free SHS, apart from being duplicating, is one the author struggles to prioritize.

The author recommends to the Minister of Education and the President, a Legislative Instrument (LI) for the Pre-Tertiary Education Act, 2020 (Act 1049), which would flesh out the framework for operationalising the fCUBE and free SHS/TVET legal provisions in Act 1049, including funding norms, etc. The fCUBE, which feeds the free SHS factory with raw materials, has never had an LI or policy document for 19 years.

Having a common LI for Pre-tertiary will create the foundation for coherence between an envisioned fCUBE Policy and the existing free SHS Policy, including funding norms.

Laws-LI-Policy!
To wit, the wrap-up strategy for the Ministry of Education should therefore aim to consolidate the harmonisation and operationalisation of existing (new) laws, than passing new, duplicating ones.

© Africa Education Watch