The Conference of Heads of Assisted Senior High Schools (CHASS) has expressed concern about the complete breakdown of discipline in Senior High Schools (SHS).
CHASS says Heads of Senior High Schools should be given the power to instil discipline in students.
Speaking at the 61st annual conference of CHASS, the President of CHASS, Reverend Stephen Owusu Sekyere, lamented the crippling effects of indiscipline in second-cycle schools.
“CHASS is concerned about the increasing rate of indiscipline that has bedevilled most of our Senior High Schools of late. Some of these misconducts such as hooliganism, bullying, occultism, smoking, and drug abuse, to mention a few, have their roots, we have detected in the homes and communities of the culprits,” the President of CHASS lamented.
In 2017 the Ghana Education Service (GES) officially banned all forms of corporal punishment of children in schools in Ghana as part of efforts aimed at promoting a safe and protective learning environment for children.
The GES directed that a Positive Discipline Toolkit which gives alternatives to corporal punishments must be adopted by all teachers.
The decision has been kicked against by a number of teacher groups and civil society organisations including education think tank, Africa Education Watch.
The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, in 2021, called for dialogue among the Ghana Education Service (GES), teachers and teacher unions over a possible review of the directive.
There have been a number of riots in several second-cycle schools in the country in recent times.
