The Executive Director, Kofi Asare of the Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), an Education Policy Research and Advocacy Organisation, has described poor infrastructure planning and liquidity issues in our Colleges of Education (CoEs) in his Official Facebook Page and he proposed some solutions to curb the menace in our Colleges.
According to Kofi Asare, Colleges of Education (CoEs) are now running double and triple track, the reason some students have been on vacation for about 6 months without knowing when they are returning to school.
Even though COE’s were built to run 3-Year programmes, the additional infrastructure required to start the 4-Year Degree Programme in 2018 is still not available today, affecting teaching.
GETFund Projects
Concerning GETFund projects, Mr. Asare added, our Colleges have become a den of abandoned projects due to the depleted, securitized and capped GETFund, as some teacher trainees remain on perpetual vacation.
At the Gambaga CoE in the North East, nine (9) GETFund projects worth GH¢25,177,356.34 which commenced in 2016 have since been abandoned.
We are obviously not doing even 20th century education planning, not to talk of 21st century. It’s pretty obvious planning means nothing in Ghana. All that matters here is sweet talk.
Anytime these issues are raised, press conferences are held to address them with speeches, without confronting the real liquidity issues.
As I keep saying, uncap the GETFund and free resources back to finance education infrastructure.
Teacher Trainee Allowance Policy
We must scrap the wasteful teacher trainee allowance policy and channel the GH 250 million/year into CoE infrastructure expansion.
We must build equitable allocation mechanisms into the paltry GETFund leftovers by prioritizing infrastructure development in new tertiary institutions like CoEs and Tech Universities.
In sum, our teacher education too is in an avoidable calendar crisis caused by poor infrastructure planning and liquidity issues, and we must all be concerned.
Kofi Asare-Eduwatch
By: Frencheducationgh.com