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NEW BASIC SCHOOL UNIFORMS, PAINTING, NEW COLOURS…
New Uniforms:
Nothing wrong with changing primary school uniforms after decades. It’s cool with me.
White attracts dirt too easily, meaning, the average pupil may require at least two sets of uniforms. The poor may struggle; some even struggle with just one set.
Let’s consider a colour that does not dirty easily.
Let’s talk to parents; they are the ones who will buy the uniforms.
Let’s provide free uniforms for pupils in the 75 deprived districts and the urban poor; similar to what we have done for both rich and poor in SHS.
Painting:
The decision to paint all basic schools is welcome.
Painting is a maintenance issue in many schools. Some haven’t seen paint for a decade. Schools must be painted regularly to look decent and nice.
On the colour, let’s consider one that will not dirty early, since we don’t have cash for regular painting. White obviously dirties too early.
The bigger picture
Basic schools have no funded maintenance budgets.
Some schools may have seen painting already through NGOs, corporate support etc.., and may rather require funds for repairing broken desks, broken windows, doors etc…many others too may have an urgent painting need.
In the medium term, let’s work towards giving effect to government’s decentralisation reform objective for the education sector and build systems to enable basic schools to have and control their maintenance budgets with support form DA’s under the supervision of the GES.
Government should fund basic school maintenance budgets and allow schools to determine their maintenance priorities.
Let’s work towards proper devolution.
By Kofi Asare
Executive Director
Africa Education Watch
