The Bongo District Chief Executive, Joseph Abaa has appealed to the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service to as a matter of urgency appoint and post a new head for Gowrie Senior Technical High school to avoid looming danger.
In June this year, students and staff of the school rioted and chased away the headmistress for mismanagement and looting of school properties. According to the students, getting access to water for their daily schedules including drinking is a big challenge and all efforts to get the headmistress to address the situation were not successful.
Large amounts of food items belonging to the school worth millions of Ghana Cedis were found in an authorized location that was linked to the headmistress, which provoked the entire teaching and non-teaching staff to call for her sacking.
Five months down the line, the situation in the school without a headmistress or a headmaster, has become worse especially insecurity where students have started agitating due to the hardship they go through.
The District Chief Executive for Bongo, Joseph Abaa has blamed the Education Service in the region for not resolving the issue and that the Assembly cannot guarantee the security of the school if these issues are not addressed.
He alleged that the performance of the school at WASSCE dropped from 64% to 14% when the headmistress took over.
“What is their crime that these students have to go through this? Who supervises their learning? Who supervises the teachers? When the teacher is not in the classroom, who ensures that the students are there learning, teaching the students well or not? So this time, I pray and hope that the Director General of Education will hear this, the Ministry of Education, all stakeholders that matter, to ensure that swift action is taken to save Gowrie Senior High School,” he said.
According to him, “The District Commander had to mobilize his boys and we had to calm the students down, calm the teachers down. And then we promised them that action will be taken soon. So when we came back, we spoke to the District Director, but then the Acting District Director and the Regional Education Director. And they promised they were going to set up a committee that will look into the matter. Then shortly after that, they will see how best they can get either to replace a head or whatever recommendation that comes up from this committee, action will be taken swiftly. But when they formed the committee, the Assembly was never informed. As I speak to you, they finished the committee some months ago I have not seen the report.”
On Monday, December 1, 2025, students of the school refused to attend classes and began to riot but DISEC immediately intervened to calm down the situation.
Our news team upon arriving in the school was greeted with an episode of students struggling to fetch and store water for subsequent use.
Every student uses the yellow oil gallon to store water while others use buckets to reduce the difficulties of accessing water.
The senior perfect and the SRC president of the school expressed worry and dissatisfaction on the insecurity and mismanagement of the school and are calling for calm and urgent solutions.
Another challenge the school is facing is transportation. The school’s only vehicle is grounded and out of use and the vehicle is about 35 years old popularly called ‘BONE SHAKER’.
Some schools in the five regions of the north have been closed down as a result of students riots and misunderstanding and this situation at Gowrie STHS may add to these numbers if issues at the school are not resolved.
Generally, the school is facing challenges in the area of infrastructure and human resources including overcrowding at the dormitories.
