Otinibi Basic School headteacher asked to step aside
The Headteacher of the Otinibi Basic School, Ms Grace Ninsaw, has been asked to step aside as investigations proceed into how much she collected from parents as registration fee for this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
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According to the La Nkwantanang-Madina Municipal Director of Education, Ms Elizabeth Oduro-Mensah, the auditor sent to the school was yet to establish how much the headteacher collected from parents, since there were conflicting reports on the issue.
Conflicting claims
“There are conflicting amounts and so if we ask her to refund GH¢50 or GH¢90, what happens to the others? The auditor has to establish how much was collected and match it against what she was asked to collect, so that we know how much we have to refund,” Ms Oduro-Mensah said.
Although the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) have approved GH¢17.40 as the registration fee, the Otinibi Basic School is alleged to have charged GH¢150.
A parent who said she had received GH¢50 expressed gratitude to the GES for its swift action.
“We are not saying we will not pay the registration fee of our children; we only ask that it should be reasonable,” a parent who spoke to the Daily Graphic on condition of anonymity said.
Another parent who only gave her name as Nicholina said she received GH₵101.
While expressing relief that the money had been refunded, she said she had issues with the headteacher telling the pupils that they would not write mock exams because of the refund.
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Background
The decision of the authorities to ask the headteacher to step aside follows a Daily Graphic publication on January 29, 2015 which drew attention to the swelling anger among some parents at Otinibi in the La Nkwantanang-Madina municipality near Accra over what they described as the high registration fees being charged by the school.
The parents contended that the fees were far beyond what the GES had approved.
While the headteacher of the school, Ms Ninsaw, insisted that the extra amount was to enable the school to prepare its pupils adequately for the examination by way of writing six mock examinations, some of the parents were of the view that the fees were outrageous and not affordable.
“The fees are too high. How does the school expect us to pay such an amount for the BECE? What will we be paying to senior high schools?” an angry parent had asked.
Interestingly, while the parents insisted that they had paid GH¢150, Ms Ninsaw told the Daily Graphic in a telephone interview that the school was collecting GH¢100 as registration fee.
When the Daily Graphic visited the school, however, the headteacher said the fee was GH¢130, with the extra GH¢30 being charged for extra classes.
When asked whether she issued receipts for the extra fees, she replied in the negative.
She also said the parent-teacher association (PTA) of the school had agreed at a meeting last term that to adequately prepare the pupils, the school would organise two internal mock examinations and participate in four external mock examinations, including one at the district level.