‘Students who sell weed on campus must be dismissed outright’ – Education Minister
The Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, has called for the outright dismissal of students who peddle marijuana on campuses of various senior high schools.
He warned that if such students were not sacked, they were likely to “poison the rest of the students who were completely innocent.”
“You will be alarmed that in some secondary schools, a student will have the courage to go and sell weed, marijuana or cannabis on the school campus, and this should merit outright dismissal because if this does not happen, he will poison the rest of the students who are completely innocent,” he said.
Let’s review the punishment regime
Addressing members of the House on growing indiscipline and drugs at the pre-tertiary level, Mr Iddrisu said he agreed that there was a problem and growing indiscipline on senior high school campuses.
“So, we may have to rethink and review our punishment regime and to cloak the Ghana Education Service with authority to deal ruthlessly with any student who misbehaves and finds himself wanting when it comes to their mode of conduct in the school,” he said.
The minister’s call came when the Member of Parliament for Kwadaso, Professor Kingsley Nyarko, asked about the interventions the ministry had implemented or was considering to promote discipline in educational institutions, especially those at the pre-tertiary level.
Heaviest sanctions must be enforced
The minister said the incidence of indiscipline in Ghana’s educational institutions was alarming, and in many instances, he had described such incidents as “un-Ghanaian.”
“When you see a Ghanaian student wield a gun in a secondary school, that cannot be the training of a Ghanaian child,” he said.
He cited an indiscipline case at Prempeh College where the school’s old boys decided to help with CCTV cameras, only for students to pull them down because “they do not want to be recorded”.
“That is indiscipline, and that is unacceptable, and the heaviest sanctions should be meted out to them by the Ghana Education Service,” he said.
With the capital punishment regime repealed, Mr Iddrisu lamented that the move had caused some laxity, with many students who engaged in indiscipline going unpunished for those unacceptable conducts.
The minister further cited a case during the senior high school West African Senior School Certificate Examination where some students decided to beat up a teacher because he would not help them in writing the exams.
“We have had an incident of that nature recorded because the teacher and invigilators would be strict and vigilant, they decided to mess up with the teacher.”
He, therefore, justified the need for the review of the punishment regime and cloaked the GES with authority to deal ruthlessly with any student who misbehaved.
Shared responsibility
The minister pointed out that parenting and socialisation were a shared responsibility of “the father and the teacher.”
To that end, he said the government was committed to dealing with indiscipline.
He told the House that sometime next week, he would appear before the House to make a statement on growing indiscipline and steps that the government was taking to arrest it.
“We will have a national conference in Sunyani before the end of July, where we intend to invite academics, the church, the Muslim community, teachers, and educationists to come,” he said.
The minister indicated how he had supported the Minister for the Interior and the Narcotics Control Commission to deal with the drug menace in schools just last week.
Together with the GES, the minister said the ministry was implementing several measures to strengthen discipline at the pre-tertiary level. “Namely, we are introducing a behavioural standards guide for learners, a revised teachers’ code of conduct, and we have drafted a national safe school policy,” he said.
