A member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Manifesto Committee on Education, Dr Clement Apaak has defended the party’s proposal to scrap academic fees for all first-year students when they win the December polls.
During the NDC youth manifesto launch in Accra on Monday, August 12, the party’s flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama, promised to introduce the policy to support struggling students.
But Apaak who is also the MP for Builsa South explained that the gap between the number of WASSCE graduates and those who advance to tertiary education is often due to financial constraints, arguing that the proposed policy aims to address this issue when the party comes to power.
“When we engaged with youth groups on how to resolve this, waiving off fees for first-year students came up strongly.
“From the figures that we have, if we are to go by some information that has been put out by our good brother Kofi Asare of Africa Education Watch, they estimate that if one was to look at the number of students who took up places in tertiary institutions in the 2023/2024 academic year, they are less than 200,000 and when you look at the academic fees of first-year students on average, it works out to anywhere between GH¢2,000 and GH¢2,300 thereabout.
“So if we were to use that as a base, we could posit that the policy will cost less than GH¢300 million a year and of course, student numbers fluctuate each year, so it is doable and if we were to pluck revenue loopholes, we should be able to mobilise the resources to fund this proposal.”
Source: Citinewsroom.com
