President-elect John Dramani Mahama has expressed grave concerns about the financial crisis engulfing Ghana’s education sector, spanning from basic schools to tertiary institutions.

Speaking during a stakeholder engagement, he highlighted the urgent need for a sustainable funding model to address the sector’s immediate and long-term challenges.

Mr. Mahama described the state of education as dire, pointing to inefficiencies, waste, and a lack of consistent funding as the root causes of the crisis.

“At the last count, 1.3 million Ghanaian children at the basic level do not have basic furniture to sit and study and so we have a crisis at the basic level,” Mr. Mahama revealed.

He criticised the current approach to funding the Free Senior High School (SHS) programme, noting that while significant sums are being spent, the absence of a dedicated funding source has led to waste and inefficiency.

“Meanwhile, tertiary education is also starved of funding because the GETFund, which was previously a reliable source, has been collateralised. Sixty per cent of the GETFund has already been spent in advance, leaving only 40 per cent to address infrastructure across the entire educational value chain,” he explained.

Labelling the situation as a full-blown crisis, the President-elect called for the convening of a National Education Review Conference to bring together all stakeholders and identify solutions to the sector’s pressing issues.

“That is a crisis, and that is why I suggested that we should hold a National Education Review Conference and examine all the bottlenecks,” he added.