The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has discontinued its longstanding scholarship scheme, which provided financial assistance to the children of cocoa farmers for their secondary education in public senior high schools.
The program, operational for over 50 years, has gradually lost its core purpose due to the government’s Free Senior High School initiative introduced in 2017.
In an interview on Radio Univers, Benjamin Larweh, the Deputy Head of Public Affairs at COCOBOD, stated: “It is over 50 years now that the Cocoa Scholarship scheme has been working, and the purpose is to provide financial assistance to the wards of cocoa farmers, particularly to support their senior secondary education in public schools. This then ran up to 2017, when the new government introduced the Free Senior High School Scheme, and what it meant was that senior high school had now become free. The scholarship scheme would not work again, because if you put money together and the government has already paid the fees for all the children, what then are you going to use the money for?”
Larweh further revealed that the Cocoa Board Education Trust, which aims to provide essential infrastructure to primary schools in cocoa-growing communities, will replace the scholarship scheme.
“Cocoa Board has been in consultation with various stakeholders as to what to do with the scholarship scheme since it is no longer relevant for the senior high school. So in consultation with members of parliament and other relevant stakeholders, it was agreed that the scholarship scheme should be remodeled and be channeled towards primary school projects in order to support infrastructural projects in basic schools within cocoa communities. The purpose of this new arrangement is to help continuously bridge the educational infrastructure gap between children in rural Ghana and their counterparts in the cities,” he said.
Addressing concerns about the board’s ability to fund the new education trust due to reports on its annual losses, Larweh stressed: “This is a fund that has been in existence over the years. It is not something new. Every year, some portion of the FOB price of cocoa is allocated to this cocoa scholarship scheme. It is not going to have any effect on the operations of the board. So then what I can say is that there is enough fund to take off care of the new arrangements.”
The shift from SHS scholarships to infrastructural investments at the basic school level seeks to address the educational disparities between rural and urban areas, ensuring that children in deprived cocoa-growing communities have better access to quality primary education.
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