Chief Executive Officer of the InterCity State Transport Corporation, Nana Akomea, has entreated parents of first-year students in Senior High School (SHS) to be bold and make public the identities of schools that are failing to adhere to the Ghana Education Service’s (GES) harmonized prospectus.
The Ghana Education Service (GES) has introduced the first-ever harmonized prospectus for senior high and technical schools in the country. The ‘National Prospectus’ aims to provide clarity on the requirements for prospective first-year students and standardize the information across all schools.
Per reports and call-ins from some parents on Peace FM, some SHSs are demanding items not on the harmonised prospectus.
Reacting to this, Nana Akomea noted that the situation will continue to persist unless parents come out and point out the schools involved in the illegal act.
“We have a standard prospectus. So if you are a parent and the school is providing you something different, that is a problem. We want this corrected so if you have been to a particular school that is doing this, you should be able to name the school. Even if you won’t mention your name, give the identity of the school. When you do this, you are being a good citizen so authorities can go to confirm.
“If you don’t do this, how do we proceed on that?” he quizzed.
Under this new system, all schools are expected to strictly follow the national prospectus, eliminating the imposition of additional items beyond the officially prescribed list. This move aims to simplify the process for parents, who will no longer need to wait until the rollout of the Computerized School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) before purchasing items for their children.
The national prospectus is organized into categories for basic needs and cleaning materials, streamlining the shopping process for parents.
Category ‘A’ covers basic items such as hard body suitcase or trunk, chop box or hard plastic container, toiletries, beddings, a pair of footwear (school specific), underwears, cutlery, and other educational materials such as mathematical set and scientific calculator, among others.
The second category includes, detergents, sanitary and cleaning materials such as liquid soap, hand gloves, washing powder, bleach and cleaning materials such as brooms, standing mob, mob bucket, and a scrubbing brush.