The Covid-19 pandemic devastates private schools – Owner

Dayspring Montessori International School board chairman Mr. Dan Ofori said on Friday that the imposition of restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic had greatly affected private schools in Ghana as they did not have no means of government assistance.

He said unlike public schools, private schools are mostly left to fend for themselves in an emergency, destroying their operations and causing them to struggle.

He made this observation in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), in Tema on the sidelines of the donation of some assorted furniture to the school by the Children and Teens in Worship Foundation (CTIW).

The donation is part of the foundation’s efforts to help schools cope with the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr. Ofori said that “financially it is difficult; during Covid-19, when we had to close, there was no income, so we had to lay off more than 90% of our teachers ”.

He revealed that the school had to pay its staff 60% of their salary from April of last year, and later the figure was reduced to 30% until the end of August, when “We couldn’t pay them anymore”.

He said they were able to raise money when the two students returned from college (JHS) to school, “but it was not even enough to pay the salaries of the professors who came to teach them during that time. “

Mr Ofori expressed concern about the negative impact of Covid-19 on private schools as public school staff received their monthly salaries even though schools were closed.

Even though he was unsure how this was going to be possible, Mr Ofori believed that some sort of assistance could have been extended to private schools so that they could meet the salary expectations of their staff while the schools were still in operation. closed.

He did, however, acknowledge the government’s help in fumigating schools before reopening and providing schools with essential equipment to help them observe Covid-19 protocols.

Mr Ofori further explained that even after the schools reopened, we could only enroll around 50% of the children who had applied for admission due to measures complying with the Covid-19 protocols.

“We had to turn away over 150 children because we didn’t want to have congestion in classrooms, which meant that a lot of income was also wasted just to observe the social distancing of the classroom for the safety of teachers and students. ,” he stated.