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Former Deputy Minister of Education, Hon Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has bemoaned that the punishment given to the 14 Senior High School students who were involved in acts of indiscipline and vandalism during the ongoing West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) will rather destroy than to reform them.

Some Senior High School students have been protesting what they call tight security and supervision of the ongoing West African Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

While students of the Tweneboa Kodua Senior High School and Juaben Senior High School threatened to boycott their exams because they thought supervisors were ‘too strict’ during the supervision of their first paper, Bright Senior High School students at Kukurantumi attacked some invigilators after allegedly being incited by their proprietor.

The Ghana Education Service has following reports of acts of indiscipline received from various Senior High Schools during their Integrated Science examination paper on Monday, 3rd August 2020 dismissed and barred the culprits from writing the ongoing examinations in their various schools.

The decision according to them is to serve as a deterrent to others and ensure that life and property are protected in the schools.

In a statement signed by the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Prof. Kwasi Opoku Amankwa, he explained that three Teachers; Thomas Anokye of Tweneboah Kodua Senior High School, Joseph Andoh of Sekondi College and Evans Yeboah of Kade Senior High Technical School have been interdicted and barred from invigilation conclusion of investigations into their alleged roles in some of the reported cases.

Students who were in schools where the destruction of school property occurred are to be surcharged for the full cost of the damage as the results of these students will be withheld until they have fully paid up the full cost of items destroyed.

But the Member of Parliament for North Tongu Constituency in the Volta Region in a posted statement believes that GES resorting to what he described as “arbitrary punishment” will not bring finality to the fundamental cause of the students’ behaviour.

Hon. Okudzeto Ablakwa has however suggested to the Ghana Education Service to get to the root cause of the action of the final year students by calling for independent investigation into the circumstances that led to the incident rather than such a severe punishment.

“While pursuing reformative punishment I propose, it is absolutely essential that independent investigations are conducted into the circumstances that led to the rather strange expectations and conditions that have brought us to this embarrassing juncture.