NaSIA to enforce private schools licensing law from January 2024

The management of the National School Inspectorate Authority (NaSIA) says it effective January 2024 will enforce private schools licensing law to ensure operators of private schools get their institutions registered and licensed.

Inspector-General of Schools, Dr Haggar Hilda Ampadu in an interview with Daily Graphic said that “the law has been in place for the last three years, and we have done stakeholder engagements, we have done jingles on radio and TV stations, we have done billboards.

So, if you are a school operator who is currently out of compliance with the law, then it means you just don’t want to comply,” she told the newspaper.

Dr Hilda said the Fees and Charges Act says that every level of pre-tertiary private school running the Ghana Education Service (GES)/NaCCA (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment) curriculum will pay GH¢300 per level as a licensing fee.

That means a typical private school that consists of kindergarten, primary, junior and senior high school will pay GH¢1,200 annually.

However, for a typical international private school that runs the Cambridge or other international curriculum, the annual fee for licensing starts from GH¢3,000,” the Inspector-General of Schools said in the interview with Graphic.

Under the Fees and Charges Act 2022 (Act 1080), the NaSIA official indicated that the law prescribes a penalty of 10 times the cost of the licensing fee in addition to a flat penalty of GH¢6,900 for non-compliance.

Ampadu continued “I think that is exorbitant, and I don’t think anybody will want to suffer that,” Dr Ampadu said. Everybody has to acquire a license now in order to operate a private school because the law has come to stay

Alternatively, the law empowers us to take a non-compliant operator to court or even close down a school in extreme circumstances.”

“So, my inspectors are on the field every day collecting data, and I wish to advise operators of private schools to cooperate with them,” she added.

She urged private schools to open their premises to the inspectors, adding that there was a penalty for “denying a government official access to your school”.

“It means you are not complying with the law because the law says we should come to your school at any time to see what you are doing there,” Dr Ampadu stated.