Curbing indiscipline in SHSs: Scrap boarding system - Educationists propose
Two educationists have proposed the scrapping of the boarding system as a major step in curbing indiscipline in senior high schools (SHSs).
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A former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Professor Stephen Adei, and a former Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, contend that the rationale for the introduction of the boarding system at the pre-colonial time to date had outlived its relevance.
In separate interviews, professors Adei and Opoku-Amankwa converged on the proposal to establish, at least, two well-resourced and strategically located quality day SHSs in each district within the communities that would be easily accessed by students.
The two expressed the belief that the current circumstances did not support the boarding system, indicating that the huge numbers of students in a boarding school, put under the care of few teachers with limited resources, had serious health, economic, social and disciplinary implications for education management.
They also proposed a national conversation on the subject to find lasting solution to the boarding challenges currently confronting schools.
Context
The calls come in the wake of recent happenings in some second cycle schools where bullying, vandalism and other forms of indiscipline have been recorded across the country.
Contributing to the discussion, Prof. Adei said: "We can have special senior high schools where boarding students will pay full cost, and students in remote villages are granted scholarship by government to stay in a boarding house.”
He said the idea of appreciating one another’s culture as a major reason for the boarding system had outlived its relevance.
Describing it as a colonial system, Prof. Adei insisted that, "Ghana is more than 60 per cent urbanised, and so, we are already mixed.
So, this is just anachronistic. Such arguments are no longer applicable today".
Citing the Kwabenya Community Day SHS in Accra, he said the population of the school was highly mixed and made up of students from northern Ghana, Volta, Ashanti, Eastern, Greater Accra, among others.
Pathetic situation
Prof. Adei said his position did not make him an anti-boarding advocate, explaining that the current boarding system was pathetic.
"At the moment, what we are doing in the public SHSs is not proper, because if you enter the dormitories, you will weep.
They are living like they are in match boxes, worse than any ghetto anywhere in the world, and yet some are even sleeping out," he noted.
Prof. Adei said what the country needed was quality community day schools sited within the communities, and not the current situation where some of the E-Blocks were located outside the communities.
He, however, stressed that his call was not a total scrapping of boarding schools, saying "there will still be a select few that will be in the boarding because we have some people in the Diaspora who want their children to experience the Ghanaian education.”
"So, it will no longer be that wholesale, but it will be based on government scholarship for students from villages where a SHS cannot be built there because of the fewer number of people there," he explained.
Prof. Adei said even though social vices such as homosexuality, occultism, smoking, bullying, among others, had been with the boarding system for a long time, there was a serious escalation, at criminal proportions, of those vices that called for a relook at the boarding system in the context of contemporary education.
Effective monitoring
Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said the educational system, which currently housed over 5,000 young adults under the care of only 50 to 100 teachers, was almost impossible for effective monitoring.
“It has health implications, it has social, economic, and disciplinary implications.
I think we have to relook the entire boarding school system and find a way to systematically deboardinise our schools.
“This idea initially started during former President Kufour’s era, where he introduced the model schools.
Subsequently, we also had the Presidents Evans Atta Mills/John Mahama era where the E-Block schools were introduced; these have to be revisited,” Prof. Opoku-Amankwa added.
The educationist said if the teachers in model schools were well-motivated, they would be more than willing to deliver their best, adding that government could then give the students one hot meal a day.
He said with such an arrangement, the government could consider returning the mission schools to their original owners, who could then run the boarding system, where parents could pay the full cost of boarding and feeding and other financial considerations, with government providing infrastructure, equipment and textbooks.
Bipartisan conversation
Prof. Opoku-Amankwa, therefore, called for a bipartisan national conversation to fashion ways to start deboardinising the schools, explaining that health issues involving bed bugs, inadequate dormitory facilities and insanitary wash rooms were some of the considerations.
“Additionally, there are a lot of social vices such as smoking and stealing that these young learners are picking up from the boarding house.
“We need to have a dispassionate discussion devoid of politics, and agree on some timelines.
It could be 10 years, it could be 15 years or even 20 years, and then systematically work to deboardinise,” he said.
He said within the timelines, each district could have two well-resourced community day schools with facilities comparable with the 55 top-rated schools in the country.
However, a professor in educational leadership and a former Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Prof. George Oduro, thinks otherwise, and believes that "the boarding system is not the problem; rather the problem is our failure to ensure that the SHS system operates and promotes discipline as they should.”
"The challenge is because some of us have taken the issue of human rights and child rights to the extreme to the extent that schools cannot freely enforce discipline," he said.
He expressed regret that heads of schools could no longer take certain decisions unless directives came from the top.
Boarding still relevant
Prof. Oduro said the idea for which the boarding system was introduced was as relevant as it was in those days, citing social interaction and social cohesiveness to encourage respect for one another’s culture and to develop a common identity.
“It has a positive orientation.
Additionally, boarding system encourages the students to concentrate on learning activities.
"So, my candid opinion is that, let's not touch the boarding system.
Let's rather rethink what was it that was done those days that reduced indiscipline in school," he said.
Writer’s Email: [email protected]
