GES will not condone acts of indiscipline among final-year SHS students
The Ghana Education Service (GES) has warned that it will not condone acts of indiscipline in any school and asked all final-year senior high school (SHS) students to comport themselves and abide by the rules and regulations in their various schools.
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Failure to do that, it said, would result in the necessary sanctions against culprits.
The caution comes following recent reports of acts of indiscipline by some final-year SHS students of two second cycle schools, resulting in sanctions meted out to them.
More than 400 final year students of the Kumasi Girls Senior High School have been suspended for various acts of misconduct.
School authorities took the action after checks revealed the students sneaked out of the school compound during the Easter festivities.
Banned items such as mobile phones, assorted dresses and cooked food were also seized from the students, mostly boarders.
They will now have to write the final year exams from their homes.
The disciplinary action leaves just about half of the 1,130 final year students on campus.
On March 26, a meeting among school authorities, final year students and their parents on one hand discussed students’ attitude towards learning.
Earlier this year, a total of 85 final-year students of the Keta Business College (KETABUSCO) and the Abor Senior High School (SHS) were withdrawn from the boarding house for engaging in various acts of indiscipline such as vandalism.
At KETABUSCO, 47 students, comprising 17 boys and 30 girls, were alleged to have held form one and two students to ransom, resulting in the collapse of a female asthmatic patient.
At the Abor SHS, 52 students were involved in indisciplined behaviour in connection with the funeral of a student who had died from motorbike accident on December 24 last year.
While 14 of the students had served internal suspension, 38 others, made up of four girls and 34 boys, were suspended indefinitely.
They would shuttle between their homes to write the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) which would begin with the written aspect on Tuesday, April 9.
From Tamale in the Northern Region,the Northern School of Business Senior High School (NOBISCO) in Tamale last Wednesday suspended about 400 final-year boarding students for gross acts of indiscipline on the school campus, reports.
The affected students would only be allowed back to the boarding house to begin their final year West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) next week after going through a screening exercise.
According to the Headmaster of the school, Mr Wilberforce Shaibu, the two-day suspension was only a temporarily measure to ensure discipline in the school.
He indicated that, “some of the female students had turned the campus into almost a brothel, while others scaled the wall to go to town to engage in nefarious activities”.
The headmaster added that the students had virtually disorganised everything in the school including the classrooms and the dining hall. Following the lack of staff bungalows, tutors of the school leave outside the campus.
Mr Wilberforce described such behaviours as unacceptable and that it did not conform to the laid down rules and regulations of the school.
He noted that because the final year students were about to leave the school, they thought they could engage in any activity and get away with it.
“But being a final year student does not mean that you are above the authority of the school: this measure is indeed intended to ensure decency and to create a conducive environment for them to concentrate and write their exams,” the headmaster further stated.
Mr Wilberforce said even though the school was on vacation, the final-year boarding students were allowed to stay on campus to write their exams. In all, over 900 students are to take part in the exams.
The headmaster, however,observed that some of the affected students were not members of the school but had been brought in by their friends to stay with them. Most of them were also Day students, while others who were earlier dismissed from the boarding house for various reasons had found their way back without authorisation.
He said it was for these reasons that the screening exercise would be conducted to ensure that only legitimate and well-behaved students were allowed back to the boarding house.
Some of the affected students who spoke to the “Daily Graphic” blamed the untoward activities of some of their colleagues for their plight. They, however, appealed to the school authorities to temper justice with mercy since the suspension would disrupt their preparations for towards the exams.
According to the headmaster, the decision of the school to suspend the students had duly been communicated to the Tamale Metropolitan Directorate of Education.
NOBISCO is the second SHS to have suspended final year students for misconduct barely two-days after the Kumasi Girls SHS suspended over 400 students for similar offences.
The Public Relations Officer of the GES, Mr Charles Parker-Allotey, told the Daily Graphic that being in final year did not extricate a student from the rules and regulations pertaining in his/her school.
“We want to remind them that they are still students as long as they are in the four walls of a school. They are, therefore, required to abide by the rules in the school,” he said.
He said students should exhibit the highest standard of discipline else the school authorities would have to discipline them if they failed to do so.
Mr Parker-Allotey said the GES would continue to enforce and uphold the practice of strict discipline in all first and second cycle schools, adding that students must, therefore, be disciplined so that they did not disrupt their studies.
He challenged parents to also advise their children to put up good behaviour as they developed into the future leaders of the country.
Story: Emmanuel Bonney & Zakaria Alhassan