Even the Student Loan scheme that they are now trumpeting was suggested by the APC in 2013 when the minister was announcing the highest fee subsidies to public university students ever in the history of education financing in this country.”
The challenged came following a statement from the SLPP led government on waving university form fee for all applicants across the country, provision of student’s loan and the school feeding programme among other goodies aimed to boost the country’s educational sector.
The APC claimed that during their tenure in governance, they were paying for all kids in the primary schools and providing teaching and learning materials, paying the girl child subsidy, which was 3 terms fees for girls in JSS1, 2 term fees for those in JSS2 and 1 term fee for those in JSS3.
The party went on that it was paying for all public exams – NPSE; BECE and the WASSCE, subsidizing fees to public University students which was costing government Le39 billion to FBC; Le27 billion to Njala; Le24 billion to MMCET annually; and Le43 billion to the Polytechnics on a quarterly basis.
Further, it revealed that it gave scholarships to the 10 best performing pupils in the WASSCE and automatic scholarships to girls pursuing the sciences in the Universities in subjects like Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering and Agriculture.
“We gave automatic scholarships to any disable student who is admitted into a college or university. We were also running a school feeding program that was benefiting the over 1.2 million kids in our government and government assisted primary schools.” APC stated, adding; “our funding to education went from a mere 3.7% of our GDP in 2006 by the SLPP to 15.5% by the time we left office in 2018. They have only gone 4% higher, which is where they left us in 2007 (4.0%). We were 85% at providing free education before we left office.”
The party also informed that it paid fees for all the levels from primary to Senior Secondary for two years during Ebola; and paid Teachers their full salaries throughout the time even though they were sitting at home and not teaching.