Adopt good business practices-Private School owners advised

PRIVATE school owners have been urged to adopt good business practices in their institutions to attract the needed funding for the development of their institutions.
The lack of good business environment has been identified as one of the challenges facing most private schools particularly those operating within less endowed communities in the country.
The Project co-ordinator of the Mitchell Group International (IMG), Mr Baba Donatus Anaba, said this in an interview with the Daily Graphic at a four- day -training programme for private school owners in Accra.
The training programme is being funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and co-ordinated by IMG with Opportunity Industrialisation Centre International (OICI) as the facilitating agent.
Mr Ananba said three main observations had been made with regards to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goal of education for all.
Some of the observations were that the governments were not likely to achieve the target of education for all even with the significant assistance being received from donor communities.
Mr Anaba again mentioned the challenges of springing up of private mushroom schools of varying qualities particularly within less privileged communities in developing nations.
It is to address these difficulties that the USAID is sponsoring the programme aimed at teaching private school owners best business management practices, to enable them to strengthen and broaden their financial management capacities.
Mr Anaba said the programme for owners of the 40 selected schools would cover basic records keeping, credit and financial Management and skills in entrepreneurial development.
Facilitators are also expected to take participants through the basic requirements needed to be credit worthy in the above mentioned areas.
Participants would also learn how to develop a good business plan in order for them to write good business plans to access loans from financial institutions.
In 2008, TMG and USIAD carried out a private school need assessment in twenty of the poorest schools in Accra to identify the basic needs and challenges of private schools in the country.
As a result of that assessment and also of likely funding partners and training institutions, this project was developed at a stakeholders meeting in May 2008.
Some stakeholders who attended this meeting included districts and circuit supervisors, Opportunity International; the lending institution, Ghana National Association of Private School (GNAPS), OICI; the trainer, TMG and USIAD as the sponsors.