The devil called PTA

By Doreen Hammond
It is difficult to put a date to when the slogan “Government cannot do it alone” began, but it seems to have come to stay and is being used by many state institutions as the reason why almost all sectors of our country are not running efficiently.
In the education sector, the slogan has translated into the formation of Parent –Teacher Associations (PTAs) in almost every basic and senior high school in the country.
It is equally difficult to trace when PTAs became part of our educational set up and who mooted an otherwise brilliant idea now turned into an instrument to fleece helpless parents. But my father tells me that when he was a student at Accra Academy in the fifties, this devil had not been conceived let alone born.
On the surface and as contained in many of the constitutions of these PTAs, they are to create and foster understanding and cooperation between parents / guardians and teachers in the training of their children.
These associations are supposed to facilitate the parental participation in the activities of the school for the benefit of the students. They are also to stimulate and maintain interest in the academic standards, sustain discipline and promote extracurricular activities. It also includes raising funds to support the development of the schools infrastructure.
Somehow these associations remain one that needs no registration to become a member and is not optional, once a child gains admission into a school, his parents or guardians become automatic members and that is why a parent could be penalised in the form of fines for not attending meetings. Even if a PTA meeting clashes with the burial of your mother, you are supposed to defer to the PTA or risk being fined for your absence!
Wonderful and well intentioned objectives they may look on paper but what have these PTAs been really up to in schools and how are they benefitting parents and students especially in public schools?
Discussions at these PTA meetings have been dominated by money. It has always been centred on collecting levies for everything from poly tanks to building classroom blocks, dormitories, teacher’s bungalows and even paying for chairs on which parents and teachers sit during such PTA meetings. The latest addition is electricity bills.
Apart from the Government approved fees for students / pupils in the case of public schools, parents at these meetings end up being cajoled into paying for so many things including what is termed “motivation” to teachers for doing the work they have been employed by the Ghana Education Service to do—teaching.
Even in private schools where the school is solely owned by a proprietor as a business entity, the PTAs are even more powerful. Parents are made to pay for all sorts of things including walls to fence the school even though they have no shares in the school.
Most meetings are hijacked by the cronies of the heads who are most often the chairmen of these associations to carry through the ideas of the heads, making believe that those ideas are those of parents.
For boarding schools, meetings are normally held on visiting days, a strategy to get parents to attend. Under duress, parents are made to sit through long hours of meetings while their minds are only centred on one thing—to see their children.
Apart from a few parents who question the impositions on parents, the rest sit and look on, for after all, question or no question it is the PTA chairman, the head of the school and the teachers who win. Sometimes something which is purported to be audited accounts are read out. In that state of mind all the parent wants to do is to get out of the room and see his/her child.
PTAs in some schools have become an avenue for some people to flaunt their wealth as these so called rich men keep proposing new projects without any consideration for the pocket of the less endowed parent.
When is enough supposed to be enough? Is the continuous existence of PTAs a statement on government’s inability to discharge what is clearly one of its constitutional requirements which is the provision of education? Why have successive governments not seen anything wrong with the excesses of PTAs? Let us say PTAs came about as a result of population growth but then what happened to planning to meet such growth?

The responsibility of education delivery in public schools should be that of Government and the role of the PTA should be purely supportive and voluntary, specifically ensuring the welfare of the child in the school.
The slogan of “Government cannot do it alone” is allowing Government to get away from its responsibilities of providing what the tax payers money is supposed to be used for.
So now we buy our own electricity poles, create our own water companies in our homes by digging our own bore holes, buy our own street lights, maintain the roads that lead to our communities and provide our own neighborhood security.
So what does the government provide for us to justify our continuous payment of taxes?
What happens to the many projects that parents contribute to building or providing after their children have left the schools when they are not shareholders of the school? No dividends?
The intention of running away from the high cost of private schools is often defeated by these associations which prefer to call themselves PTAs. Parents are already burdened with providing food, clothing and shelter for their children outside the school environment and their situation must not be compounded by the activities of these so called PTAs.
Certainly education is too important to be toyed with to the extent that even classroom blocks should be left on the shoulders of parents to build.
This trend of events must stop and PTAs must be called to order. They must be regulated in some way.
Alternatively, the government should come out openly to ask parents to pay for the facilities that they are unable to provide in the public schools. Payment for facilities which the Government is not providing “because the Government cannot do it alone” should be added officially to the school fees so that parents could plan and there will also be some transparency.
The PTA as it operates now is an otherwise brilliant idea that has been high jacked by a few to fleece already over burdened parents. This should not be allowed to go on. And that is why I could not help but agree with a parent who referred to it as the devil!