By Franklin ASARE-DONKOH
Management, staff and students of New Nation School (NNS), a privately run international school located in the Adentan Municipality over the weekend held a durbar to climax a week-long activity marking 20 years in existence.
The durbar brought together, people from academia, educationists, Traditional authorities, religious heads, political figures, parents, staff members and students (both past and present) to make the day most memorable.
NNS, a Cambridge International Education (CIE) curricular-run school, according to its founders, Dr. John Kpikpi and Mrs Kpikpi began with only 34 students and seven (7) classrooms had grown to an appreciable numbers.
“20 years down the line, the student population is over 1284 while our infrastructure has moved from seven to 52 classrooms,” Dr. Kpikpi added.
The school currently has four departments Nursery, Primary, Lower Secondary and Upper Secondary. And plans to establish a full-fledged university in addition to its existing campus.
The Director of the NNS, Dr. John Kpikpi, speaking in an interview with the media on the sidelines of the event, appealed to the government for technical and financial assistance.
According to him, owners and managers of private educational institutions do not receive any form of assistance from the government even though they are also providing sound education for Ghanaian children.
“We don’t receive any form of assistance from the government although we are formidable partners in the education sector.
All we get from the government are huge taxes instead of support. Let me use this medium to appeal to the government for some form of tax relief to lessen the burden on owners of private schools.
Elsewhere, the state supports private education institutions through subsidies, grants, and tax holidays but the story is different in our jurisdiction. Here the government rather squeezed out the little funds to run the schools properly in the form of obnoxious taxes,” the Director of NNS told reporters.
On the issue of perceived high fee changes by owners of schools running international programs, Dr. Kpikpi said though that perception may be true or false, his school is the least charged among all the schools running international programs.
“Our fees are very very modest compared to others in the same space because our mission is to provide the best quality and holistic education, for children of every tribe and nation, in an environment of faith, hope, and love.
We have a special fee-paying structure that allows every parent who wants to enroll their children into NNS to do so without any hindrance, we at NNS want every child everywhere to receive the best quality education thus our lowest fees charge coupled with the flexible terms compared to others,” the Director of the NNS reiterated.