Asiedu Nketiah backs greater church role in running mission schools

National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, has backed calls for greater involvement of churches in the management of mission schools, arguing that stronger participation by the founding religious bodies could encourage further investment in education.

He said churches and other religious organisations had historically played a major role in the development of education in Ghana and should have a meaningful role in the management of the institutions they established.

Mr Asiedu Nketiah made the remarks at the centenary celebration of the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church at Sekyedumase in the Ejura-Sekyedumase Municipality of the Ashanti Region.

He was speaking at the launch of an initiative by the SDA Church to establish a College of Education at Sekyedumase as part of activities marking its 100th anniversary. The proposed college is expected to expand access to teacher education and create opportunities for young people in the area.

Mr Asiedu Nketiah said the motivation for churches to establish and invest in schools was not limited to academic education, but also included the desire to raise children within the values and principles of their respective faiths.

He argued that government financial support for mission schools should not necessarily mean that the religious bodies that established them should lose their role in shaping their identity and values.

“The main driving force for religious bodies to invest in the building of schools is the need for their members to bring up their children in the core beliefs and discipline of their faith,” he said.

Mr Asiedu Nketiah said the argument that churches should lose their role in teaching the basic tenets of their faith in mission schools because the State also invested public funds in them was flawed.

He said parents whose children attended such schools were also taxpayers and, therefore, contributed to the public resources used to support the institutions.

“The missions were the pioneers of education in the Gold Coast and continue to play a key role in the sector to date. The fact that most of the so-called Grade A schools are mission schools implies that there is something they are doing right which must be encouraged rather than diluted,” he said.

He maintained that parents and students exercised a choice when applying to schools and that admission into a particular mission school should come with an understanding of its ethos and disciplinary requirements.

“Parents and their wards are free to exercise their rights of choice at the point of application for admission. Once admitted to their choice of school, they have already committed to the disciplinary code of the school,” he said.

His comments come amid an ongoing national debate over the management and religious identity of government-assisted mission schools.

The Christian Council of Ghana and the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference have argued that government assistance to mission schools should not be equated with state ownership or control, while also maintaining that students’ constitutional rights must be respected.

A Memorandum of Understanding on religious tolerance and freedom in private and government-assisted mission schools was facilitated by the National Peace Council as part of efforts to provide a framework for managing religious diversity in such institutions.

The debate has consequently centred on how to balance the religious character of mission-founded schools with constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion, equality and access to education.