TEACHER Unions in the country have said they will resist attempts by any government to hand over the running of public basic schools to private organisations under Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements.
They said such partnerships, like Ghana Partnership Schools (GPS) project of the current administration, which is yet to be rolled out, was not the best approach to improve learning outcome and ensuring quality education.
Under an umbrella body called Coalition of Teacher Unions against Privatisation of Education, they said governments should rather resource public schools and improve supervision to achieve the desired results.
Mr Kofi Asare, a member of the coalition, made this known in a presentation at a workshop on, “PPPs in education” organised by the coalition for some journalists in Accra on Thursday.
Membership of the coalition, led by the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), includes the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Teachers Educational Workers Union of Ghana (TEWU), and Coalition of Concerned Teachers.
The workshop was to rekindle the coalition’s opposition to PPP projects in education including the GPS project which the government intended to pilot this September but has not yet done so due to apparent pressure from the unions.
The GPS project scheduled to be piloted in the Ashanti, Northern, Central and Greater Accra regions, sought to surrender the running of some 100 public basic schools to private management.
This approach, according to the Ministry of Education, was to improve the learning outcomes but the teacher unions opposed it, raising concerns including lack of consultation and the challenges that it would bring.
Reiterating some of the challenges, Mr Asare said the PPP would lead to discrimination against children who were less academically intelligent and those with special needs because the private partner would pick and choose the best to achieve better learning outcome.
He said the approach was expensive; often implemented in urban areas thereby increasing the quality education gap; would limit access to education and privatise quality education.
Mr Asare gave instances in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda and other countries where similar projects were undertaken but failed to live up to expectation and advised the government to be guided by such happenings.
As part of its advocacy plans, Mr Asare said the coalition would ensure that political parties denounce PPAs in education in their respective manifestos so that they could be held accountable if they attempted to introduce the concept after winning power.
NAGRAT vice president, Jacob Anaba said the coalition was not against private education but rather PPPs that took advantage of the poor because education was a right every government should promote in a sustainable manner.
He said the coalition was on the look out to prevent the government from smuggling it in and therefore rallied the media to support in the advocacy.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
