In recent years, a familiar trend has emerged in Ghanaian Senior High Schools, which is concerning to many observers.
Frequent disturbing news of a student-teacher amorous relationship, a leaked sex tape, a violent clash among students causing injuries and property damage or another highly publicised act of misconduct.
Most often, in response to public outcry, almost like kneejerk reactions, akin to our responses to the perennial flooding situation all across the country, committees are subsequently established, stakeholders are consulted, conferences are held, and recommendations are made.
Yet the problem still remains.
On Monday morning, June 22, 2026, the Minister of Education, Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, in a radio interview, which was also reported by Graphic online, said the ministry was preparing for a conference scheduled to take place before the end of July 2026.
He is reported to have further mentioned that the conference will bring together civil society groups, religious entities, parents, academics, and educationists to identify the causes of indiscipline in schools and propose solutions to address these growing problems.
However, I ask: Is another conference really the solution to this problem?
After decades of research, policy talks, workshops, handbooks, and stakeholder engagements on school indiscipline in Ghana, is the problem really that we don't know enough about the causes of indiscipline in our schools?
Or we have rather feigned ignorance, adopted intentional neglect and allowed politicization to incapacitate our society, including GES?
Kwadwo Oteng Akyina’s recent work, for example, unmasks school indiscipline and demonstrate a journey through thematic exploration of literature that spans several years. A cursory search also finds some studies that date at least two decades old.
Various Ghanaian research studies have equally identified family, communal, school, teacher, and even media factors contributing to the growing indiscipline, demonstrating the multi-causal nature of the indiscipline problems.
These studies have also proffered a wealth of mediation measures which tend toward collaboration, counselling, and well-defined, context-appropriate rules.
The few studies I have listed here do not even scratch the surface of the wealth of literature on this topic.
Similar reasons and comparable cures have been identified and proposed over decades of painstaking research by educational scholars.
While new insights and novel ideas to addressing old policy-related national problems are always necessary, it can be said, evidentially, that the problem of school indiscipline facing Ghana is not a lack of diagnoses.
There is an overwhelming number of diagnoses, but the challenge is rather with the dearth of implementation.
Furthermore, there are models from other countries that have successfully addressed indiscipline in their schools that are available to benchmark, where necessary.
Think of Singapore with the REACH model, Finland's Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) and South Korea with its strengthened school counselling systems, student guidance programmes, parental involvement mechanisms, and school-based behavioural support structures.
I recognise that their models may not wholly fit our national goals and priorities due to cultural, contextual, and resource differences, but they demonstrate that lasting national change is driven by evidence-based institutional interventions, rather than continuous diagnostic conferences and workshops.
At the risk of being misunderstood and my thesis dismissed, let me be clear.
I am not by any means suggesting that conferences are unimportant by nature. They are good for agenda setting, framing, gathering of stakeholder views and perspectives, and building consensus.
However, conferences become problematic, capital-seeking, and mere merchandising when they are used without the direct and intentional implementation of the recommended outcomes.
Ghana's educational sector has produced numerous conference reports, committee findings, and stakeholder recommendations over the years.
Some of these recommendations have culminated in the development of the GES Code of Conduct for Students (2024), which set out standards of behaviour, disciplinary procedures, the types of sanctions used (such as the removal of corporal punishment), counselling, and parental involvement.
The Code also highlights the use of preventive and corrective methods to discipline, such as counselling, behavioural corrections and disciplinary committees, being the usual structure of school-level discipline.
Following its implementation, various stakeholders have already presented valuable critiques and measures for improvement.
For instance, stakeholders called for the reinstatement of the Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) following their replacement with the Parent Associations (PAs), noting the importance of parent-teacher collaboration for effective child discipline and character formation. Some parents have also called for the return of corporal punishment in our schools due to the fast erosion of discipline in our schools.
Let me indicate, however, that I am not in support of the reintroduction of capital punishment in our schools.
Most in my generation, experienced the era of the intentional use of physical force and severe pains like whipping in our schools.
The reality is that such a practice can have dangerous long-term consequences on children's mental and psychological state, necessitating a review and complete discouragement of this cultural practice in our school system.
There are better and more scientifically innovative ways to ensure discipline while at the same time ensuring the psychological safety of children in our schools.
Currently at the senior High school level, for example, there is a module running across the country on the essential values for Ghanaian Youth, which is complete with training manuals and handbook on Values Learning Communities (VLC) which began early this year.
Subsequently, in every lesson, teachers are supposed to infuse national values throughout the lesson. Weekly trainings are also organised for teachers throughout the term, where inspectors go around to ensure that full implementation is adhered to.
Understandably, an evaluation to assess the impact of all these discipline related interventions is yet to be done to understand what needs to be improved if the outcomes or results are not what is expected.
Now the onus lies on us to continuously rework and improve the already implemented frameworks to translate our cumulative knowledge into practical interventions and accountability systems.
Concerning stakeholder participation during the proposed national conference, for example, how many stakeholders can participate?
How many headmasters, housemistresses, clergy men and women, school counsellors, school prefects, parents, and students from both affected and non-affected schools will actually participate?
Is a centralised conference the best way to engage key stakeholders on a matter such as this – undisciplined acts?
If the objective is to hear from those living with the problem daily, shouldn’t the exercise be decentralised and school-based rather than organising a large-scale conference?
Are we sure that this conference will not generate recommendations that we already know?
Because in a typical era of decentralisation, Assembly members, unit committee members, traditional and religious leaders must know the perpetrators of such undisciplined acts.
Such people live in the communities and reside in their homes.
The general public within the district and community – drivers, market women, shop attendants, church members interact with these students on daily basis.
Besides, the bigger and critical question, we should be asking is, who are these indiscipline school children copying from?
Is it safe to say that they are only reflecting what they see demonstrated in our homes, schools, churches, mosques, streets, markets, where we build on water ways, disobey traffic regulations, cheat at the least opportunity, the low level of patriotism and nationalism among the adult generation, etc. etc.
We should ask, are there more undisciplined acts in our senior high schools than within the larger society?
Are the students not showing us what they learnt from the larger society? Obviously, we all know the answer. So when will we have a national conference to find the root cause of such levels of undisciplined acts within the larger society?
I am really not sure if another grand style conference is what Ghana needs now to uncover the findings that decades of research and stakeholder engagement have already determined.
In my view, what Ghana needs are in twofold: first, to agree on a set of national values to guide the conduct of all citizens, and second to shift its attention from diagnosis to effective and intentional implementation of existing outcomes.
Refining the GES Code of Conduct for Students (2024), compulsory guidance and counselling offices in all SHSs, with full time guidance and counselling professionals, not as part of a teacher’s additional responsibility, disciplinary audits once a year, greater parental inclusion and accountability, forming discipline, patriotism, and character development clubs at all levels in our society and not just in schools, and publishing key disciplinary indicators to the public, could all be part of the measures.
These measures will shift the discussion from pointing out problems to measuring progress and holding stakeholders accountable for the results.
Another conference, if must be organised at all, as a necessity, in my view, should rather investigate and explain why previous recommendations have not been implemented, assess the existing frameworks and develop actionable plans and accountability mechanisms.
After all, every genuinely concerned educationist, stakeholder and parent in Ghana today, knows that the current spate of indiscipline in our schools did not just pop-up.
We all know that the indiscipline we are seeking to address now, is only a minor symptom of a much bigger cultural, values, attitudinal and national identity crisis facing the nation as a whole and not just the youth.
It is an unfortunate situation we have either ignored for decades or pretended its negative impact will never catch up with us soon.
The challenge before us, therefore, in my humble view, is no longer diagnosis. It is the intentional execution of the years of empirically based recommendations we have failed to adhered to.
We chose the easy path in the past – pretence and neglect, let us now take some bold steps to arrest all forms of undisciplined acts in society as a country, then the youth will have no other option than to follow suit.
