Catholic Education for Integral Development: Shaping A Resilient and Inclusive Ghana

Keynote address by Dr. Charles Abugre, Managing Director of the Tamale Ecclesiastical Province Partnership in Action (TEPPIA) at the opening ceremony of the 2nd National Catholic Education Forum in Koforidua on Tuesday, March 11, 2025

The Chairman of this Forum

Apostolic Nuncio

The Most Rev Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi, Bishop of the Sunyani Diocese and President of Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference.

Your Grace and Lordships, Archbishops and Bishops of the Catholic Church of Ghana

Most Rev Kweku Afrifa Agyekum, Bishop of Koforidua

General Secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference

Honorable Ministers

Members of Parliament and elected officials.

Director General GES

Traditional rulers

Religious men and women

Members of faith communities

Fellow lay persons of the church

Development partners

Educational Managers and teachers

Ladies and gentlemen.

All protocols observed

Acknowledge some YCS and Pax Romana friends – Most Rev Charles Palmer-Buckle Rev Bobby Benson.

TEPPIA –

I am both honored and humbled by the privilege to address this second national education forum taking place here in Koforidua, 15 years after the first one was held in Kumasi.  Going down memory lane, the first ever recorded national (albeit pre-Ghana) forum was hosted by the Diocese of Accra in 1931.  Since the Kumasi forum, as noted by the Most Rev Bishop Africa, our host,  several regional catholic education forums have been held across the country seeking solutions to strengthen catholic education and to clarify and strengthen the relationship between church and state in the delivery of education services. This latter issue – the relationship between state and missions (faith-based bodies)– in the management of schools remains a crucial issue for deliberation in this forum and I will have a few things to say about this, building on the welcome remarks of our host Bishop.

We are opening our Forum on the day that the new government is presenting its first budget to a new parliament. This calls for thanks to the Lord for bringing us through a largely violence free transition to a new government and a new milestone in our democratic governance journey. But this day also calls for a pause for reflection on the national context informing the choices that the budget will make and the implications for the theme of our Forum – the role of catholic education in shaping an inclusive and resilient Ghana – as the two are intricately connected.

The budget’s sole purpose, if I might digress, is to explain and justify the sacrifices that Ghanaians must make in collectively mobilizing resources (financial and non-financial), each according to their abilities, to be deployed in a manner as to improve the quality of life in the future for all, according need, without worsening the conditions of any other. A budget is an instrument for inclusive progress – it must show not only how resources are mobilized and deployed but also what each and everyone of us,  as individuals, communities, business entities, associations etc must do or NOT do in order for the resources so deployed to achieve the desired social impacts. This is what budget policy means – technical and confusing jargon notwithstanding. A budget fails in its purpose if it leads to greater inequalities, worsens hardships without reward for society and shows no compassion nor empathy for the least among us. The budget is nothing else but an instrument of social policy and cohesion, if even the economists (like myself) try to confuse us with jargon. For after all an economy is the jargon (the language we use)  to describe how individuals, households or corporations, embedded in social systems act and interact to generate output and distribute the benefits of those outputs among the actors. Our forum is interested in how education contributes these means and results.

This brings me to my first set of substantive remarks – what the purpose of education is for Catholic educators.

In the Second Vatican Council, Declaration on Christian Education Gravissimum Educationis (October 28, 1965)the purpose of education is to serve a new humanism in which the social person was willing to talk and work for the realization of the common good. The vision of  the harmonious development of physical, moral and intellectual abilities, aimed at the gradual maturation of a sense of responsibility; the conquest of true freedom; and positive and prudent sex education[15].  Note the emphasis on the “social person” – the Christian having enbibed the life of Christ through personal conversion must live this conversion through evangelism – bring that new life to society, fostering a new humanity. As Catholic educators we must first  humanize education, that is, to make it a process in which each person can develop his or her own deep-rooted attitudes and vocation, and thus contribute to his or her vocation within the community. “Humanizing education”  means putting the person at the centre of education, in a framework of relationships that make up a living community, which is interdependent and bound to a common destiny. This is fraternal humanism.

Pope Francis ( may our prayers be with him), speaking to a union of Catholic educators in Italy, said the following: “Education is not about knowing things or taking lessons but about being able to use three lingos: those of the head, the heart, and the hands… learning so that you can think about what you feel and do, can feel what you think and do, and can do what you feel and think. Unity within a person.

He also says: “Perhaps the mission of the university is to train social poets, men and women who, upon learning the grammar and vocabulary of humanity, have a spark, a brilliance that allows them to imagine the unknown”

And the mission of the Catholic teacher is to “new passion for humanisms and teach with passion”.  “ refresh your teaching skills, especially in light of new technologies, but teaching is not just a job: teaching is a relationship in which each teacher must feel fully involved as a person, in order to give meaning to the task of educating their students.

love the “difficult” students more… those who do not want to study, those who find themselves in difficult situations, the disabled and foreigners, who today pose a great challenge for schools.

The product of Catholic education, to put it in my lay terms, is one who is:

• CURIOUS, CREATIVE AND ENQUIRING , THIRSTING FOR KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS THROUGHOUT THEIR LIVES.
• SELF CONFIDENT ABLE TO WORK WITH OTHERS WHILST HOLDING THEIR OWN THROUGHOUT LIFE .
• EARNS A DECENT LIVING FROM THEIR HANDS AND THEIR HEADS HONESTLY
• ABOVE ALL, BE A BEACON OF PEACE, HONESTY AND, HUMILTY AND SACRIFICE.

These are the life-long skills of education, many of our products have acquired and thrived in one or more ways. But if we were truly successful, will there not have been far less corruption and crookedness, far less violence,  far less abuse of power, far less arrogance of power, far less wastefulness, far less callousness, far less inequalities and exclusion, and far more truth telling, far more trust, far more volunteerism, far more listening,  and far more empathy for the poor. CATHOLIC EDUCATION MUST BE EVER MORE EMBEDDED IN CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHINING FOR A  NEW HUMANISM.

Catholic/mission education is founded on the family.  Pope Francis, Catechesis of May 20, 2015 on family and education.  “good family education is the backbone of humanism”, and from there unfold the various implications of education at the service of the society, based on mutual trust and reciprocity of duties[19].  For these reasons, educational and academic institutions wishing to place the person at the centre of their mission are called to respect the family as the first natural society, and to put themselves at its side, in line with a correct understanding of subsidiarity. In this context. No power, including the government can arrogate itself the power of excluding families from all aspects of the children’s education – moral, school management, financial, and educational content. Participation and meaningful Multi-stakeholder Consultation should be an integral part of the attitude in the management of education an essential part of the practice of the governance of education.

Let me now-turn to specific issues of education policy and management in more forward looking manner and addressed to specific constituencies.

1. Our stage of development and implication for the mix of education provisioning

I made an earlier statement that the government budget being read today and the objectives of our forum intersect in the form of national development context.

There is no doubt that the budget this year, and the ones to come,  will be austere. There will be very little money to spend on social development and infrastructure. The focus will  most likely be to constrain public expenditure (reduce the projected deficit financing) in order to reduce inflation, which hopefully will translate into lower domestic interest rates which will hopefully subsequently lead toa bigger fiscal space to borrow domestically in future. Whilst promising to scrap some taxes they will definitely be looking for new ways to raise tax. Every government complains that they face a problem of a limited number of economic actors who pay tax so they must broaden the tax net. The main reason for the limited tax net is that there are few vibrant small and medium sized companies that are creating jobs. Even our lands produce so little that we have to import to feed ourselves. Everything is imported. An ever larger import bill in foreign exchange means that every time wither local or foreign interest rates increase, government and businesses become more indebted and have less money to spend. This type of  economy is unique to all countries at an early stages of development. Whilst others addressed this problem in the long run by prioritizing skills training, we have stuck stubbornly to gramma education, investing ever more resources to train  sharp tongues and less to to train skilled hands and practical minded brains. The market for sharp tongues is government employment, in sales and marketing and in the talking and litigation industries. These grow slowly or are burdensome. We have got the priorities up-side down. The number of children enrolled in gramma secondary schools is more than 3 times those enrolled in technical vocational schools. The gap is widening.  Without reversing gear we shall forever be confronted by a  narrow tax base and  vicious cycle of indebtedness and IMF driven austerity. I shall return to this issue.

The relationship between mission school and government.

Government is a late comer to institutional education service. When the first Education act was passed in the mid 19^th century, the colonial government had no schools. Today the GoG contributes roughly 80% of the education budget. The state has rightly taken up the task of supporting mission schools to address some of the financial cost of education. But the investment that mission schools make into their institutions exceed money it includes a culture of discipline, respect, measured ambition and brotherliness and others. They bring a long history of success. After all mission education is public education in the sense that they are non-profit and aimed at serving society. State and mission have a shared purpose and of course differences. The latter are resolvable through dialogue. But it is a worry that for a decade a formal understanding governing the respective roles of state and mission remain hanging. This needs to be resolved soonest. It should not be so difficult for a shared understanding that government support should not mean government take over and that subsidiarity is a proven good practice of development management.

Similarly it is important to emphasis that institutional education of children is most beneficial when it build on a good family practice. Education is a shared responsibility for afterall the purpose if social reproduction of labour and cultures. Never again should efforts by parents to supplement public investment through parent/guardian contribution be excluded by the state as a political fiat.

To the government of Ghana

1. Revive and sign the MOU between state and missions in the management of historically mission schools. The Mission schools welcome support not take-over. The Governing Boards is a means to address the balance allowing government policy oversight whilst a majority Mission representation will ensure effective mission influence on such matters as the appointment of heads and recruitment of students.
2. Build on previous government’s good effort in technical education by committing to building/upgrading/expanding at least one TVET centre of excellence in each during this parliamentary term. Incorporate into these institutions and technical universities new technologies of the future – robotics, e-mobility, green energies.
3. Set a 10 year target, through the NDPC or other, to reverse the resource allocation imbalance favoiring technical, vocation and science driven universities.
4. As part of the agenda for agro-industry led transformation, revamp agricultural colleges as TVERs aiming at at least one in a region,
5. Support technical teachers to go on industrial internships to gain practical experience.
6. Make Deliberate efforts to establish bilateral arrangements with countries with proven TVET programmes – Germany, Singapore, China etc – for teacher training, attachments and other forms collabieratiob
7. Abolish the restriction of parent right to contribute financially to the ward’s education and reinstate the Parent-Teacher- Association giving rights of teachers to be represented in the partnerships. Be realistic what the state can afford and cannot. Bite what you chew.
8. The traffic system hurt the children the poor the ost. Review it to make it work or end it.

Church/Mission and Religious Congregation Leaders

We are proud of our grammar schools. Mission schools are among the best performing schools. 3 of the 10 top ranked schools by science quiz etc. But we need to:

1. Put more emphasis on STEM schools in the grammar school system. Encourage fairs and creative, innovation driven competions among our school to promote science and creativity.
2. Be as enthusiastic about TVETs as we are about grammar schools, In 3 regions there are no catholic/private TVETs.
3. We should consider, in collaboration with the GoG introducing technical education into the Catholic University and strengthening the Appiah Menkah college and St John Bosco training college in Navrongo to provide effective training of teachers for technical and vocational schools.
4. As the second largest owners of TVETs, following the GoG, Catholic TVETs the Catholic church should be appropriately represented in TVET governing bodies – the Service and the Commission
5. Think bigger – aim at Catholic universities teaching the latest technologies and inspiring the next leap in education training in Ghana.
6. For the success of and sustainability and resilience of Catholic education, the Religious Congregations should invest in succession planning. Some of the best schools – technical or grammar are run by the Religious.

Education Managers

1. Growing indiscipline. We have rightly ended corporal punishment. But what has replaced it clearly doesn’t work. We need a solution.
2. For TVETs we must find ways to link our TVETs with industry and to interest industry in TVETs.
3. A serious need for training of trainers

EDUCATION IS A COOPERATIVE EXERCISE. OUR GATHERING TODAY IS A TESTAMENT OF THAT. I WISH OUR FORUM SUCCESSFUL DELIBERATION

Courtesy: Newswatchgh.com