Private school children are Ghanaians and must not be discriminated against

Private school owners and parents of children in private schools are being discriminated against through the policy formulation of the government. The association of private schools came out to accuse two institutions of bias and a deliberate attempt to affect their operations.

They accused West Africa Exams Council (WAEC) of marking their students down in the Basic Education Certificate

Read full articleExaminations (BECE) and said that the operations of the computerised school selection and placement system is skewed in favour of public schools.

Many people condemned the association and urged them to up their game and stop being so rhetorical.

However, just a few days after these incidents, there is a clear manifestation of the level of bias, or what is called discrimination, against these private schools. This alleged discrimination comes from none other than the Director-General of the Ghana education service, Prof Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa.

The director made a comment on a private radio station, Asempa FM. He said he has made a request to the education ministry to reserve about 80 to 90% of the slots in category A schools for public school students.

"In our various meetings, I have suggested 80 or 90% of Category A placement be allocated to students from public schools, and those from private schools be made to write an entrance exam before being given admission".

He continued. "I want the 30% ‘Category A’ school allocation currently reserved for public schools to be given to the private school students and even with that, allow them to sit for an entrance examination," he told the host of the Ekosiisen show.

Aside from the 90% of the vacancies that the director said should be given to public schools, he wants the private school students to write entrance exams to enable them to get the rest of the spots left for them.

Many are asking if the students from the private schools are not Ghanaians. Or their parents don't pay the taxes that are used to build these schools?

Is the Ghana education service covering their non-performance with these policies?

It is undeniable that public basic schools have consistently underperformed in basic school certificate exams over the years. These schools are managed and taught by qualified teachers, but they continue to produce weak results over the years. The reasons for this non-performance are varied but include a lack of resources and supervision, among others.

Many are of the view that the education service is using these policies to cover up their non-performance. Others are of the view that it is a ploy to collapse the private schools and force parents to bring their children to the public basic schools that have been abandoned by the upper and middle-class citizens.

This is direct discrimination, and those who are involved in it must be brought to order. Parents of children in private schools have been wailing over the placement their children got given the grades they obtained in the BECE. They complained that children from public schools who obtained far worse than their wards got placed in schools their children couldn't get into.

Many parents are thus preparing to transfer their children to public schools during their final year to enable them to get better placement.

If this happens, what will happen to these private schools? How will they be able to continue to operate with a dwindling number of students? What will also become of the many Ghanaians who get their daily bread from these places?

We are thus calling on the Ghana education service and the ministry of education to treat all children as equals, irrespective of where they receive their education.