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The Head of Public Relations of the Ministry of Education (MoE), Mr Paul Krampah, says the decision of the Kumasi Senior High Technical School (KSTS) to prevent some students of the school from writing the Physics Theory paper of the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) was wrong. This is in reaction to a story published by graphic.com.gh which said 15 students of the KSTS were driven from the examination hall when the Physics Theory paper was being written for non-payment of school fees. Over the years, Mr Krampah said, the issue had come up and that heads had been told to collect fees from students before they write examinations, especially external examinations, adding that �this is the policy�. �If you deny a final-year student from writing his/her final examination, it means you are jeopardising the person�s future. Heads should not wait till the last minute before demanding the payment of fees,� he emphasised. He noted that school authorities and parents of defaulting students could come to an understanding on the payment, adding that one option could be payment by instalments. On the situation at the KSTS, he said once the students had been prevented from writing the paper, nothing could be done, except to ask them to write the examination next year or the November-December examination if they had registered for it. �The West African Examinations Council (WAEC), for now, cannot do anything about it. It is just unfortunate,� he stated. Meanwhile, the Conference of Heads of Assisted Senior High Schools (CHASS) has said it is in discussions with the Ghana Education Service (GES) on how to deal with the issue of collection of fees from final-year students. It said following complaints by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament over the indebtedness of students to schools, the heads had been compelled to collect all fees owed by students before they left school. The President of CHASS, Mr Samuel Ofori-Adjei, told graphic.com.gh that some final-year students had adopted a negative attitude towards the payment of their fees. He said once the students knew they had been registered for the WASSCE, some of them stopped attending classes, only to turn up to write the examination. �Some of them do not even turn up for the mock examination after they have been registered for the WASSCE,� he said, adding that the ability of the students to access their results on the Internet had compounded the problem. Mr Ofori-Adjei said the students knew they could access their results online and so they did not bother to pay their fees, since they would not go back to their schools for the results. Some of the students, he said, spent the money given to them by their parents to pay their fees. �Currently, I have so many certificates that have not been collected by students who have left the school,� he stated. graphic.com.gh learnt that some of the heads have adopted the strategy of asking students who owe fees to come out of the examination halls for 25 minutes before the maximum period of 30 minutes allowed for students to report to the examination hall after the commencement of an examination. �Once 25 minutes of your time is wasted, next time when you are coming to write the examination you will bring your fees,� one head said, adding that although parents gave the fees to their children to pay, some of them squandered the money.