Church-State Education Partnership In Ghana: The Position of Catholic Bishop Matthew Gyamfi 12 Years Ago, Still Relevant Today

Church-State Education Partnership

[A presentation by Most Rev. Matthew Gyamfi, Catholic Bishop of Sunyani, Bishop responsible for Education and a member of the Episcopal Committee for Human Development – NCS, Accra, Miklin Hotel, October 9, 2012]

Introduction

Mr. Chairman,

In April 2010, the Catholic Church had its First National Forum on Education in Kumasi. Present at the Forum were representatives of the other Churches and Islamic denominations who have some partnership with the State in the Management of their schools. As a follow up, the Church has, in the course of this year, organized Education Fora in all the ten Regions soliciting views on the Government–Church Partnership in education delivery in the country.

This presentation is a summary of some of the outcomes of the National and Regional Education fora on Education delivery. In it, I hope to briefly trace the checkered history of collaboration between the Church and State. I give examples of different forms of collaborations that exist between church and State from which we can learn. I will then give a conceptual framework for the collaboration between church and State with special preference for education. The thesis is that there is no clear partnership agreement between the Church and the Sate that is acceptable to both parties. This situation creates serious managerial problems in the Mission Schools.

Before then permit me to read a letter which I received on the 19^th of September 2012 from the Executive Director of the National Vocational Institute (NVTI). The tone of the letter exemplifies the history and the current State of Government–Church relationship with respect to Education delivery. The letter is referenced DIR/MOU/12/Vol. 1(3) and addresses to the Owner, Our lady of Fatima Vocational Training School. (Read).

1. The Director is fully aware that the Church is the owner of the vocational school which we the Church has founded, financed and equipped.
2. At a certain stage the Diocese appeals to the State to pay the tuition for a school purposefully sited in a poor rural area to help uplift the lives of the people.\
3. The Church and the Sate therefore entered into a sort of partnership with clear roles–Government pays salaries, the Church manage the school to achieve the objectives of both Church and State.
4. The State tells his partner, the owner of the school, that the “NVTI will take over permanently”, a move that “will make such institutes fully government-owned”
5. The State decides to arbitrary to take over and own a property that he knows and acknowledges belongs to the Church and says the Church will have no say in the new “relationship” if it is a relationship at all.

Strange as the content and brief analysis may sound this has been the experience of the Missions in their relations with the State in Education delivery. The Church starts schools mainly in poor and urban areas to give holistic education to people. We request the state to use some of the taxes the parents pay for the tuition of the students. Then the State says because it is tax payers money, the State has taken the school and its management away from the Church. Since independence it is the repeat of the same story Mission school after Mission school and year after year. But this has not always been the case. Before independence, Church and State had a workable partnership with immense benefits for the education of the people.

History

Collaboration between the church and State in the management of schools dates far back in time. The first ever Education Act in Ghana was in 1852. By this time the government did not have schools of its own, and did not see the need for the government to have schools. Nevertheless, this act by the government required that grants be given to the missions to start and to manage their schools.

The Educational ordinance of 1882 spelt out the conditions under which grants were given. In addition to giving grants, buildings and equipment, good organization, discipline, and passes in subjects all attracted further grants from the state for all schools—state and mission.

In 1887 another educational ordinance categorized primary schools into government schools and assisted schools which received grants from the government. By the year 1900, the government had only 7 of the over 290 schools in the country (Wesleyans—100; Basel Missionaries—154 and Catholics who had made a reappearance in 1880 after their unsuccessful missionary bid in 1482 had 17 schools). Up till now the Churches had started and managed their schools. The State had played its role–starting and managing its own schools while providing grants and resources for all the schools to run. More and more children were getting access to quality well managed schools. That was a wonderful collaboration from the perspective of both the church and the state for the good of the people. All were satisfied with the setup. It was more efficient.

When in 1925 Sir Gorden Guggisburg announced his 16 principles for educational delivery in the Gold Coast, he was at pains to note that “There should be cooperation between government and missions and the latter should be subsidized for educational purposes” (14^th Principle) and that “The government must have the ultimate control of education throughout the Gold Coast” (15^th Principle).

These two principles have guided the partnership between the church and the state until the 1950s when the state increasingly sought to minimize and to eliminate the church completely from educational delivery in the country.

Thus in 1951 the accelerated development plan of the country directed that all schools including those started by and up till now managed by the church should all be totally under the control of the State. When the churches protested and refused to hand over their schools to the state, the Government through the Education Act of 1961 directed that only Local Councils were permitted to open new Schools.

When the NLC came to power in 1966 it reversed this directive and instructed that the schools started and managed by the missions be given back to them to manage. In spite of this directive it is important to note that the Kwarpon Educational review Committee of 1966, the Dzobo Review Committee of 1973 and the Educational Reform of 1987 which discussed among other things, objective content and the administration and management of education in the country, all refused to invite the Church for their contribution in the discussions. Further, they did not even acknowledge the existence of the Religious Educational Units let alone their management roles in the schools they have founded.

When the Catholic Church vehemently protested against the sidelining of the Church in the 1987 education reforms and especially in its refusal to acknowledge the Role of the Educational Units, the then Minister for Education Mr. Ekow Spio Garbrah, on the recommendation of the Ghana Education Service Council, directed among other things in his letter; “The right of Educational Units to Manage and Supervise Educational Institutions established and developed by their respective Religious bodies in partnership with the Government” that “the existing structure of the Educational Unit System should be maintained and the General Manager and Regional Manager are to be of the grade of District Director and Assistant Director respectively;……” Local Managers’ position was also to be recognized. The document spelt out in detail and without any ambiguity the roles and responsibilities of the Unit Schools and the role and responsibilities of the Sate towards these schools.

This document which contains all the best hopes of a return to the good old days when the partnership between the Church and State was clear and respected by both sides was flatly ignored by the GES. The then Director General issued contradictory directives to most of what the Honorable Minister of Education had directed on the recommendation of the GES Council. For example, while the Minister directed that Regional Managers should post teachers in mission schools, the Director General directed that it is the District and Municipal Directors who should do the posting (April 28, 2000). The Director General also ignored the role of Local Managers. In effect the Managerial Role of the Regional Managers that the Spio Garbrah document sought to restore in the Unit Schools did not go down well with the Director General of the time and therefore it was not implemented and it has never been implemented or respected.

In consequence we returned to the murky situation in the Church-State partnership with respect to education delivery— Who does what?

A clear case of this confusion and the refusal of the State to acknowledge any partnership between itself and the Church was clearly demonstrated when the Anamuah-Mensah Educational Review Committee recommended, among other things, that religious and moral education could be part of the school curriculum but the Implementation Committee for the recommendation decided to make this subject mere appendices to the so-called important subjects. The President of Ghana at the time—J. A. Kuffour had to instruct the GES to re-instate the teaching of Religious and Moral Education on the time table in response to the strong objections from the Catholic Bishops and other Religious Bodies to the position of the Implementation Committee.

Subsequently, the Bishops had further discussion on Church—State Partnership on Education delivery with the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education, the Minister of Education and the Council of State. In consequence, the Minister of Education Prof. Dominic Fobih, on April 24, 2009, appointed a committee of 17 chaired by Prof. Kwasi-Ansuh-Kyeremeh to review the 1999 partnership document issued by the Hon. Spio Garbrah but in the context of current developments in the Education sector which includes the decentralization of Education Management in the country and the place of the Unit Schools. The Committee was required to be clear on the role and responsibilities of the Missions in education delivery; the existing structure of Educational Units; the roles of General and Regional Managers of Unit Schools; postings, transfers and discipline within unit schools; as well at the appointment of heads of unit schools and other related matters.

The report of this committee which made only minor changes to the Spio-Garbrah document and which was sent to the ministry has neither been approved nor rejected by the Ministry of Education. We have not heard officially from the State. All we know is that many GES officials by their actions and inactions do not respect the only partnership agreement we know of—Spio Garbrah Document on partnership. We believe that respect for Church-State Relationship in education should not be a matter that should be left to the discretion of any GES Official.

Our Concerns Today

Most people in the ten regions where we had the fora do not believe that the State has any relationship with the Church in education delivery; that the Church has been sidelined and the state now controls everything. They pointed out that

1. Mission Schools are among the best in the country in quality education delivery yet the State want to take them away from us and abolish our management structures and practices which ensure this success.
2. The State wants to eliminate or nozzle the management role of the Church which is the pillar in character formation and discipline at a time when the State is crying foul against indiscipline, immorality, corruption and other social vices.
3. If the State is not eliminating the Missions from Education delivery, we will appreciate it if the State were to tell us in plain language what relationship, if any, there is between the Church and State with respect to education delivery.
4. Some of the proposals in the ongoing exercise to re-organize and decentralize educational delivery in Ghana have come out in pamphlet forms only. The framers know very well that the Missions own many schools which they are supposed to manage, but the pamphlets do not recognize the existence of the educational units in the proposed organogram nor do they propose a reconsideration of a partnership between Church and State in the education delivery.
5. Some of the Churches’ ideas on education like the computerization of admissions are sometimes ridiculed and rewarded with insults because we say what we know to be true about an educational policy which adversely affects our schools and a section of society.
6. f) We own schools and are supposed to manage them but somebody makes the admission into the school of students who may not even want to be there. The fairness of the computer system of admission as it exists now is still seriously questionably.
7. g) The Church builds the School and owns it, but it is the District/Municipal Director, and not the Regional Manager who is responsible for offering admission to the 30% into the Church founded Schools. We have to go and beg a District/Municipal Director to offer admission of qualified students into our own schools. The District Director most often says no to the owners of the school.
8. h) Some District/Municipal Directors appoint and remove teachers to and from unit schools at will without due consultation with Regional Managers thus causing management problems for the Regional Managers.
9. Religious instruction and human formation are some of the main reasons The Church invests heavily in education and yet we are prevented from teaching our faith to students in schools we have founded.
10. j) The Church is woefully under-represented in the Board of Governors of Schools they are supposed to found own and manage.

These and many other unpleasant situations in Church Schools are because there is no commonly acceptable partnership agreement between Church and State in education delivery. This situation bodes ill for the future of education in the country. We therefore appeal to the Minister of Education to facilitate as soon as possible the crafting of a partnership agreement that is fair to both the Unit Schools and the State. In this agreement, we have several models to guide us.

The USA Experience

Here there is a sharp difference between Church and State. The State is able to provide the needed educational facilities for most communities to have access to education. Because of the state schools if the Church has to build schools to achieve its specific goals of evangelization, then the Church should bear the full cost—buildings, tuition, management etc. The advantage of this system is that the Church has full control over its schools without significant outside interference.

The disadvantage of this system is that it denies children in Church schools their share of the state funds allocated for education. One should not be penalized if s/he chooses to attend one school rather the other. And in Ghana why should children who attend schools other than government-assisted schools be denied free school feeding, tuition and capitation grant. Their parents are tax payers, which monies are used to support education delivery. Further, in some places private schools are necessities rather than a luxury. Government-assisted schools alone will not be enough to admit all children of school-going age.

Switzerland Example

Here the State provides all educational facilities irrespective of the denomination. The State even pays for the Teachers of the Religion of the school provided the teachers have the qualification in religion from a recognized university. Management of the School is entirely left in the hands of the denomination concerned. The State however supervises to make sure the respective State and denominational schools meet the educational standards of the state. It works well and there are no conflicts of interest. In Ghana, in the good old days, the government used to do just this. For example, Prempeh College in Kumasi was built by the State for the Methodist and the Presbyterians to be managed by same while the Opoku Ware School was built for Catholics to be managed by Catholics. They are some of the best Schools in the country because of effective State-Church partnership at least from in the past.

Canadian example

In Canada, there are two boards for education—the Separate School Board and the State School Board. The Separate School Boards are Boards that the Church has set up to help run and manage Church Schools in areas where Catholics are minority. The State School Board Thus caters for the majority Religion—the Protestants. The reverse is the case where catholic are in a majority and Protestants are a minority like in Province of Quebec. The educational budget is distributed among the boards proportionately–that is each board according to the number of students and therefore teachers that you have. The Board is supposed to use this money to run the schools. Rev. Ministers have the right to visit any schools any time to teach or to see how the school is going. In the respective schools, the respective churches teach the faith that is unique to it while satisfying the needs of other students who do not belong to similar persuasion.

The advantage of this system is that the spiritual and academic needs of all students are taken care of. The state pays for all the education of all of its children. There is a healthy competition between the State and Church schools on the management, academic, moral and disciplinary fronts.

I believe most schools in the developed world have one of these systems or slight variation of one of these systems of education.

Model of the Ghana Health Services

The State can also learn from the wonderful collaboration the Church has with the State in health care delivery. The Ghana Health Services has similar organizational structures as the Ghana Education Service, from the national to the local levels. The Missions appoint their staff and manage their health institutions. Yet it is the State that pays for most of the health workers in Mission Hospitals and Health institutions.

The State supplies some equipment and sometimes provides physical structures, because the health personnel are rendering services to all Ghanaians. The State supervises to make sure that required standards in health care delivery are maintained and enhanced by the Churches’ health institutions. This collaboration has worked well and the people of Ghana are the beneficiaries. There are minimal conflicts with District Directors of health Services in most of the health institutions etc. It is possible for the GES to adopt this model of partnership for Church-State relationship in education delivery.

In considering whether we need to partner in education management and delivery or not we should consider the many benefits in effective partnership. These include Shared experiences and expertise, mutual support, division of labor, increased resources—human, material as well as financial, increased sense of ownership, extended reach, increased effectiveness, effective evaluation and monitoring.

For the partnership to survive, certain principles need to be followed. Partnerships need trust, long-term commitment, clear and mutually accepted roles, nurturing and relationships between individuals as well as institutions and the realization that genuine partnerships involve much more than mere contribution of finance.

Conclusion

The partnership between the Church and the State in Ghana dates long before independence but the partnership until now remains fluid and undocumented.

The1887 Educational ordinance endorses the principle that education could be better enhanced when religious bodies are supported financially in the building and management of their schools. The Spio Garbrah document recognized “The right of Educational Units to manage and supervise Educational institutions established and developed by their respective Religious bodies in partnership with the government”.

As at now the nature and practice of the partnership, if any, is not clear. We urge the Government to initiate a process to produce a clear partnership agreement acceptable to both sides–Partnership framework which ensures that the Church would be involved and consulted on all policy change and direction in the education sector other than the current status where the Church build schools the Government comes in to supply teachers but the Church is prevented from managing his schools nor is he invited to contribute to policy change. The Catholic Church in Ghana believes that for a better collaboration with the state, there should be a documented partnership framework focused on problem-solving in the education sector than always lamenting about the weaknesses and failings in education.

On the other hand if the State will not accept a partnership that respects our rights and interest in our schools the State can make this also clear to us. We can then take back the schools we have founded and finance the few we can to serve only those we can afford.

We wish to caution here that this state of affairs will bring untold hardship to many communities, a problem we have always tried to solve by starting these schools in such communities.

Not to do anything about the existing confused and unworkable relationship between the Church and State in education recovery is unacceptable and will create more problems for education delivery. We trust the State to act now and act fast.

Editor’s Note: This presentation by Bishop Matthew Gyamfi, currently, the President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC) is being re-published by Newswatchgh.com because of its relevance today after almost 12 years. It was first published on the website of the GCBC ( www.cbcgha.org) on November 20, 2012.