GNAT urges Mahama to prioritise Pre-Tertiary Education Funding Act

General secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) Thomas Musah Tanko has called on President- elect, John Dramani Mahama, to ensure a passage of Pre-Tertiary Education Funding Act to help revive the gradual collapse of schools at that level.

Thomas Musah Tanko said, the funding sources could come from Property Tax and Parent Teacher Association (PTA) contributions to fund the Act.

He is confident that the funds raised through this Act could be used to address infrastructure deficit, capitation grant and other challenges with the free SHS program.

The GNAT General Secretary said this in an interview with 3news Daniel Opoku in Accra on December 16.

“We want to remind his Excellency the President-elect John Dramani Mahama, we beg him, we must get our education system right. The only weapon available to break poverty is education. The only way we can sustain our democracy is education,” he noted.

Mr Tanko added that “Mr. President, please the education problem you cannot do it alone and our hope is that you said we will all discuss these things together. The position of GNAT is this, we need a Pre-tertiary Education Funding Act that will determine how we want to fund pre tertiary education in Ghana.”

“And when we get that particular Act, we can all be assured whether you are rich or you are poor, we will be assured as to how we intend to fund our education system. We have the PTA contributions, it could find its way into the Act; we legalize it giving parents the opportunity, we also find a way of taxing the rich to care for the poor,” he said.

Mr Tanko also identified other possible sources, “We are talking about this petroleum resources and all that. Certain percentage of it could be dedicated to the Pre-tertiary Education Act. We can look at property rate, we can take some portion of it. If today, we say that let us add .000% to the VAT so that that VAT can go into funding education everybody will clap for it.”

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