Students Who Vandalise School Property Must Pay - Minister

Professor Naana Jane Opoku Agyemang, the Minister of Education, has called on head teachers to ensure that discipline prevailed in the schools and that students who vandalised school property must pay the full cost. She expressed worry that the growing levels of indiscipline in the country�s senior high schools required stringent measures that would nib the situation in the bud saying; �Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) must uproot indiscipline in our schools�. Prof. Agyemang was addressing the CHASS 53rd annual conference in Tamale on Tuesday, which was attended by over 560 heads of second-cycle institutions in the country to review modalities of administering the schools for quality education. The minister had earlier toured the Bawa and Kamina Barracks, and Dahi Sheili primary and kindergarten schools in the Tamale Metropolis and Sagnarigu districts where she interacted with the pupils and urged them to study hard. Prof. Agyemang, however, blamed some teachers who fed students with confidential information concerning their schools, a situation which sometimes created agitations among students, hence the upheavals. She said because of the high levels of indiscipline in the schools, teenage pregnancy was increasing and warned teachers who might be perpetrators of such acts to desist else, when found, the law would deal with them ruthlessly. She said the government had in the past few years embarked on major institutional refresher training for teachers especially those teaching mathematics and science with the hope of improving the performances of students and entreated the heads of the various schools to monitor those teachers for improved performances. Prof. Agyemang bemoaned the alarming rate of examination leakages in the country and appealed to parents not to indulge in any examination malpractices saying; �I will not hesitate to recommend cancellation of any exams that is leaked�. Mrs Cecilia Kwakye Cofie, President of CHASS and Headmistress of Winneba Senior High School, complained of the non-payment of absorbed fees and feeding grants for schools in the Upper East, Upper West and Northern regions as those fees had been in arrears for more than two terms. She said heads of schools had been battling with financial difficulties because of such fees stressing that; �Heads of schools do not have the peace to deliver on their core mandate since they constantly suffer harassment from goods and service providers�. Mrs Cofie appealed to the ministry to release the school fees for students early, possibly at the beginning of the year, to enable parents to pay the fees of the wards on time in order not to create difficulty to parents. Sagnarigu Naa, Ambassador Yakubu Abdulai, Chief of Sagnarigu, who chaired the function, warned the country to find lasting solutions to issues of international terrorism which was gradually infiltrating Ghana through students� activities. He said educational institutions must work out mechanisms for co-operation with the national security agencies to avert extremist groups infiltrating the country.