GES urged to give semi autonomy to schools to handle disciplinary issues

Mr. Richard Kwashie Kovey, Convenor of the Campaign Against Privatization and Commercialization of Education (CAPCOE), has called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to give semi-autonomy to schools to handle disciplinary issues.

He mentioned that the rollout of the safe school policy has given students the impression that they are right in everything they do and that teachers cannot discipline them.

Mr. Kovey was speaking with the Ghana News Agency in an interview in Tema and said that students must be made aware that, just like adults, they are not above the law and could be tried in juvenile courts and punished per the prescribed sanctions for offenses committed.

He mentioned that it was very unfortunate how students were resorting to vandalizing school properties, the properties of teachers, bullying colleagues, and physical and verbal assault on colleagues and teachers in the schools on a daily basis.

“We also need to take a second look at our curriculum and develop content that is engaging and highly skilled. The current system that places emphasis on assessing students through text items creates room for idleness,” he stated.

He said that about 30 percent theory and 70 percent practical curricula were relevant to the modern job market as they would keep students active and have no time for such barbaric acts.

The CAPCOE Convenor added that the majority of students were beginning to misbehave in order to get rid of their teachers at school, stressing that there was a critical need to finalize the national code of conduct to bind both basic and secondary cycle students.

“When you sanction a teacher for an offense a student commits with the excuse that the teacher was negligent in his or her supervisory role, you give the student who committed the offense the impression that whatever he does, someone else will take responsibility for his action,” he said.