Civil Society Organizations in education are calling on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to ensure expenditure in education funding is not cut.

In a three-page petition, the groups said prior to the staff-level agreement, the IMF team at a meeting in Accra with the CSOs assured participants of its commitment to protect social protection and related budgets from expenditure cuts, as part of the expenditure rationalisation conditionality which included basic education, the School Feeding Programme in primary schools, and cash grants to the poorest but the reversal is the case.

The CSOs bemoaned that these pernicious expenditure cuts are happening at a critical time when one million Ghanaian children aged 4-18 are out of school, over 5,000 public basic schools exist under trees, sheds, and dilapidated structures, 2.3 million public basic school children do not have access to desks, and less than a quarter of primary school graduates are exhibiting minimum competencies in Mathematics and English.

Source:flyfmghana.com/Kwabena Nyarko Abronoma