Private schools urged to ensure discipline
The Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University for Development Studies (UDS), Prof. Gabriel Ayum Teye, has advised managers of private educational institutions to ensure discipline in their schools.
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He observed that the practice where some managers engaged in unconventional means to ensure their pupils and students excelled in examinations to put them in pole positions to attract more admissions was partly contributing to the decadence in the society today.
Prof. Teye said, “In an attempt by some private schools to get the ‘As and the ‘Ones,’ some of them use the unorthodox means to ensure that the children pass. If you train schoolchildren through foul means at JHS and SHS and they get to the universities, they find it difficult to stop. We have been getting such students in UDS. When we get them, we sack them.”
He was speaking at the 24th Annual General Conference of the Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) in Tamale on the theme: “Quality or quantity education: Which way, Ghana?” It brought together representatives of GNAPS from all over the country to discuss the contributions and challenges and the way forward for private schools.
Important role of private schools
In an address read on his behalf, the National President of GNAPS, Mr Godwin Sowah emphasised the important role of private schools in the development of the country, adding that: “The private schools have, by dint of hard work, survived extreme difficulties without expected support from outside.”
The address read on his behalf by the first National Chairman of GNAPS, Mr Steve Revss, however expressed regret that in recent times, there had been a reduction in enrolment of students into private schools in the country following the inability of some parents to pay the school fees of their wards.
As a result, most of the schools have defaulted in the payment of loans contracted from banks thus “pushing them to near collapse. Some of the schools are also not able to access logistical support from the appropriate wings of the GES, and are therefore teaching and learning under difficult and stressful conditions to attain good examination results.”
According to Mr Sowah, “It is not fair to the thousands of Ghanaian children in private schools and their parents who pay taxes for the development of the nation, only to be excluded from the national budget (education).”
Mushrooming of private schools
The Northern Regional Chairperson of GNAPS, Mrs Florence Pul, expressed concern about the mushrooming of private schools in the Tamale Metropolis, which she said was sub-standard.
She therefore appealed to the Northern Regional Directorate of the Ghana Education Service to strengthen its supervisory roles and stamp its feet on the ground to ensure that the GES guidelines were strictly adhered to.
The Northern Regional Director of Education, Mr Paul Apanga, acknowledged the tremendous contribution of private schools in the improvement of education in the country and pledged the continuous support of the GES for private public partnership in education.