After the Ghana Education Service asked the head and housemaster of the Ghana Senior High School to step aside for an investigation into an incident, the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has called for them to be reinstated.
General Secretary of GNAT, Thomas Musah who made the call on behalf of his outfit said GES should rather be concerned with paying Capitation Grant to teachers and subventions to schools than taking hasty decisions.
In an interview with TV3 monitored by AcademicWeek, he said Ghana Education Service (GES) should have acted with caution as it did not have a full grasp of the situation before sanctioning the headmaster and the housemaster.
“The difficulty I had when I heard the news was that will a headmaster go and put students in a toilet? Will they do that? Will a rational human being do that?” the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) member quizzed.
Thomas Musah Tanko told the Accra-based media outlet that “But upon a thorough investigation by the team that went there, we’ve realised that this is an old thing that the students do; that they go there to study.
So please Ghana Education Service (GES) should take it easy. We rather want to remind them that the Capitation Grant has not been paid for over two years now.”
Micah’s call comes after the Education Service asked the headmaster of Ghana Senior High School, Douglas Haruna Yakubu and Senior housemaster Sayibu Fusseini to step aside for using toilet cubicles as dormitories for students.
In a press statement shared with AcademicWeek, the management of the Education Service said it has directed the headmaster and Senior housemaster of GHANASCO to step aside to allow further probe into the matter.
“Headmaster and the Senior Housemaster have been directed to step aside to allow for further investigations into the matter by the Regional Director of Education and report back in two weeks,” the Ghana Education Service (GES) said.
Describing the situation as unfortunate, the management of the Ghana Education Service (GES) said the school declared 1,790 vacancies during the 2022 academic year computerised school selection and placement process.
“Only 1,467 students have enrolled. The school is expected to have excess capacity to even house extra 300 students. It is thus unacceptable to have students sleep in such a place,” the Service in charge of Education said in the release.