By Seedy Jobe
The Gambia’s minister of basic and secondary education, Dr. Habibatou Drammeh, defended a ban on fundraising activities in public schools this week, saying the policy, which is already in effect, is intended to shield parents from added costs and keep schools focused on instruction.
Speaking on QTV’s “This Morning” program on Wednesday, Dr. Drammeh said the ministry acted after concluding that fundraising events were disrupting classes and imposing an unfair financial burden on families and school administrators.
“We realized that the fundraising activities were doing more harm in our schools than good. So we decided to take that very bold decision to ban all fundraising activities,” she said.
Dr. Drammeh said the ban was necessary to preserve the government’s no-levy policy, under which education in public basic and secondary schools is supposed to be free. Continuing to allow fundraisers, she said, undermined that policy in practice, since parents and students often ended up paying for tickets and related activities.
She said many of the fundraising events were not run by educators but by businesspeople who brought commercial programs into schools, collected money from parents, and left only a portion of the proceeds with the institutions themselves.
“You want to help basic and secondary education. Let’s come and work together in another way without collecting money from poor parents,” Dr. Drammeh said.
The minister said the ban applies without exception. She pointed to existing government support, including the School Improvement Grant—which is allocated based on enrollment and provides some schools with more than one million dalasis—as well as free textbooks for grades one through nine and school feeding programs in some schools.
On enforcement, Dr. Drammeh said regional education offices are monitoring compliance and that the directive has been made public. She warned that violations would be treated as disciplinary matters under the government’s general orders, with penalties ranging from suspension to dismissal.
“We are not asking our schools to raise funds. We are asking our schools to focus on the teaching and learning,” she said.
Dr. Drammeh asked school administrators facing resource shortages to report directly to ministry headquarters rather than turn to fundraising, and said compliance with the ban had been observed since it took effect.
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