The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Adu Asare has questioned government on how it seeks to transform the basic level of education when it is consistently cutting down funds allocated to the sector.

According to Kofi Adu Asare, the incumbent government has prioritised the second-cycle schools due to its flagship programme, Free Senior High School (SHS), and has left the basic education sector to rot.

He made these assertions when he contributed to the discussion on the lack of textbooks for teaching the new curriculum in public basic schools in the country.

Mr Adu Asare who believes that the issue is a financial one, insisted that financial investment into the sector would resolve the issue in the shortest possible time.

“The textbook issue is clearly a financing one. If you look at the goods and services of the [Education] Ministry, the portion that goes to basic is what is called the Free Basic Education Budget and that category has suffered cuts. Even this year, what was allocated last year which was woefully inadequate experienced a 40% cut.

“So we keep cutting goods and services funds meant for the basic level. So inadequate budgetary approval for running Free Basic Education, including providing teaching and learning resources would always ensure that you won’t always have adequate textbooks, exercise books and other logistics,” he said.

Discussions on the lack of textbooks in various public basic schools after three years of rolling out the new curriculum resurfaced in JoyNews’ feature series, 'Ghana Schools of Shame'.

But Mr Adu Asare, speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Tuesday, also indicated ‘lack of priority’ as a reason for the current predicament.

“We’re increasing funding for secondary school education due to free SHS, we’re consistently cutting down funds for the Free Basic Education budget. “So yes, we are having fewer resources and we’re also not distributing the little we have according to what should be our priority but disbursing it on what is the political priority,” he said on Tuesday.