The PTA Council will assist in resolving food shortages in SHSs.
The National Council of Parent Teacher Associations (NCPTA) in the Eastern Region plans to meet with secondary school principals to discuss how the organization can best help alleviate the schools' intermittent food shortages.
Delays in delivering nonperishable food items to most schools cause intermittent food shortages, impeding academic activities. Some parents have expressed concern about the poor quality of meals served to their children.
Speaking to Starr News during the inauguration of Akuapem Zone of National Council of Parent-Teacher Associations on Saturday July 9, 2022 the Eastern Regional Chairman of the Association Joshua Terkpernor said parents are ready and willing to support government to resolve feeding challenges in the schools.
"Normally, we meet with the authorities to see how we can best solve the problem because these are our children." The government is doing its best by providing free SHS. We have about 100 Senior High Schools in the Eastern region alone, and Central and other regions may have even more, so as parents, we may have to come in to support the free SHS, and when we come in to support the free SHS, it will make education stronger."
The NCPTA believes that stronger collaboration with the government could help mitigate some of the challenges associated with implementing the Free SHS policy.
Some PTA representatives suggested to the government that the Free Senior High School policy be reviewed to allow parents to pay for items such as feeding and boarding fees in order to reduce the financial burden that is crippling the economy.
The NCPTA took advantage of the opportunity to appeal to the striking teacher unions to call off their strike action while negotiations with the government continue, stating that a prolonged strike will harm students, particularly those preparing to take the West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), because they had already lost many contact hours due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused school closures for nearly a year.
The National Council of Parent-Teacher Associations for Akuapem Zone was made up of seventeen second cycle institutions elected to coordinate the activities of PTA in the schools in order to fulfill the association's broad vision of becoming a stronger body in the education sector in the country to influence decision making and contribute to the improvement of quality education delivery and development in the schools.
PTAs from various schools in the zone presented reports on various projects undertaken in their schools this year, emphasizing the challenge of some parents' reluctance to pay dues due to the government's failure to be forthright in payment of PTA dues.
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