Kofi Asare, the Executive Director at Africa Education Watch has called on the Ghana Education Service to regulate rules governing Senior High Schools in the country.
According to him, this will help address the challenge brought on by the recent impasse between Wesley Girls’ High School (WGHS) and a Muslim student over her right to fast despite the school’s “No Fasting Policy”.
He then intimated it is an opportunity for regulators “to make changes to rules that may have outlived their usefulness”.
Mr Asare further intimated that, he has submitted a proposal to the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum. Similarly, he revealed that he has submitted same proposal to the Chairman of Parliament’s Select Committee on Education.
To this end, he insists the move will help predict any future occurrences of this nature.
Speaking in an interview, he highlighted the need for government to adhere to the content of the proposal.
“First of all, we need to conduct a baseline of existing codified rules and uncodified rules in all our schools to have a sense of the rules that exist- conventionally or written.
“Second is to standardize the rules irrespective of the mission, every school is a public school. We need to have one set of rules governing all Senior High Schools that are government-assisted or are run with state funds.
“Third, build consensus among all the key stakeholders… for them to adopt a common code of conduct for all the schools; focusing on education, not religion because the child is in school first to learn.
“Then, ensure that these standardized rules are consistent with our constitution, are sufficiently inclusive and are also consistent with the modern demands of modernity and discipline”.
Implementation of proposal
Mr. Asare further underscored the need to implement the outlined items contained in the proposal. According to him, this will safeguard inclusiveness and consistency in Senior High School. This, he explains, will be irrespective of the school’s missionary background or otherwise.
Africa Education Watch’s Executive Director further emphasized the need for these codes to be standardized.
He averred that the “regulator or the oversight agency, GES, will be able to monitor the implementation of these standardized codes in all 700+ senior high schools”.
Additionally, he explained that the paucity of this will be “challenging to coordinate them”.
As part of his recommendation to address the issue, Mr. Asare noted that the GES must work through the members of the school’s board. This, he maintained, is the highest decision-making body in the governance of the school to “achieve some sanity there”.
Government called on to intervene
Meanwhile, the Ghana National Association of Muslim Teachers has called on government to hold a stakeholders meeting to resolve the Wesley Girls-Ramadan impasse.
In a release, the Association intimated that potential of escalating into a Muslim-Christian confrontation if left unresolved.
The Muslim teachers say the government must intervene immediately for an amicable solution.
“The situation in non-mission schools in regard to the abuse of Muslim students is even more worrying. Schools with dominant Christians as members of management operate as Christian mission schools and abusing Muslim Students with impunity.
“The aggregate effect of these abuses is an indication that the much-touted mantra of tolerance and coexistence among Christians and Muslims in Ghana is only a façade of superficial significance”.
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