President of the Ghana Athletics (GA), Bawah Fuseini, has described the relationship between the athletics governing body and the Ghana Education Service (GES) as strained and incompatible.

Speaking to JoySports at the 2025 Accra Open Championship held at the University of Ghana Stadium on Saturday, May 17, Fuseini said the lack of collaboration between the two bodies has hindered efforts to build a seamless development pathway for student-athletes.

“It’s a very thorny issue between Ghana Education Service and Ghana Athletics, let me be very blunt… because the systems are not compatible,” he said.

“Their system is completely different from our system.”

Fuseini revealed that over the past two years, the GA has attempted to work with GES to organize a national inter-school championship following the annual interco games, but those efforts have failed.

“We tried for the past two years to see where we can meet Ghana Athletics and GES to have a national inter school championship after the interco but that one didn’t work out,” he said.

“But fortunately we have that relationship with the TVET, it’s not as vibrant as the GES but they are also coming up.”

He stressed the need for urgent action to ensure that student-athletes can transition smoothly into national and international competitions after completing senior high school.

“It has been an issue that we need to address very, very seriously because the athletes after senior high school, where do they go, what happens to them? So we need to absorb them, we need to give them the national and international platform,” Fuseini explained.

He concluded by stating that while the GA is open to working with GES, it would not plead for collaboration.

“If the Ghana Education Service want us to work together, we are ready but we’re not going to go begging for them to work together with us because we’ve realised that they want to keep their system, we also want to keep our system,” he said.