Golden Sunbeam School calls on government to intervene on licence fees

Management of Golden Sunbeam International School has called on the Minister of Education to speedily resolve the licensing fee issues between private International schools and the National School Inspectorate Authority (NaSIA).

In a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency, the School disagreed with the Authority on the arbitrary increase of license fees imposed on struggling private schools at a time when COVID-19 had and still destroying national economies worldwide.

The statement said in 2020, when schools had been shut down due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and going through financial crises, NaSIA , without broad consultation with stakeholders, unilaterally imposed a new licensing fee from GHC 200 charged per department to GHC 2500 per department per annum, an astronomical increase of over 1150 per cent.

It said the phenomenal increase was deemed by members of the international private school association to be unfair, discriminatory, and anti-business.

The statement said consequently, NaSIA extended the payment of the license fees till December, 2021.

On October 14 while the matter is still pending with on-going negotiations, NaSIA, without any alert to members unilaterally issues a damning reputational report on international schools offering Cambridge and International Baccalaurete programmes, citing Golden Sunbeam and other schools without licence to run the 2021/2022 programme.

The management of the school viewed the publication as causing fear, panic, and undue anxiety to parents, students, and teachers.

The statement said in March 2021, in spite of the disagreements, Golden Sunbeam went ahead and paid NaSIA an amount of GHC 10,500 for four departments pending the resolution of the case, out of goodwill and respect for the laws of Ghana.

It said it was not right and unfair for NaSIA to cite Golden Sunbeam as an example in her publication and thus ruining Golden Sunbeam's hard earned reputation

"Golden Sunbeam is a Member of the Partner Schools Global Network of the British Council accredited to run the Cambridge Assessment International Education in Ghana with registration number 027. since 2007,".

"For the avoidance of doubt, NaSIA does not issue International license for international programmes on behalf of the Cambridge Assessment Center or the British Council. NASIA is a regulator of all pre-tertiary schools both public and private which originally was done by the Ghana Education Service", it said.