The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) is calling for the establishment of more reform centers to address rising indiscipline among students.
The Association warns that growing acts of violence such as students brandishing knives and attacking their peers—pose a serious threat to the country’s educational system if left unchecked.
GNAT’s General Secretary, Thomas Tanko Musah, made the call on August 1, in response to a recent surge in student violence reported in parts of Accra.
“Those institutions that help to shape the children, the institutions are longer there. So we need more of the correctional institutions. There are children in their homes they cannot talk to their father, they cannot talk to their mother, but the time the parents will say jack the worse would have happened.”
“So, for me the institutions that were established years back that will help the children reform we also need to look at these homes. Because students are pulling out knives, so if they go to these correctional centers when they come back, they will change,” he noted.
Mr Musah called for empowering of the teachers in the schools to act swiftly.
“Now the teachers are somehow handicapped even though the Minister (of Education) has said that the teachers should take action, we are asking those things to be documented. Yes, the Minister has spoken but we need a policy guideline to help us handle this thing very well so that the teachers themselves will not get into trouble,” he suggested.
The General Secretary of GNAT bemoaned how some students have relied on the mobile phones to cause violence in their schools.
“We are not in good times otherwise, in the olden days your mother will ask you who is your friend? Today the friend is in the house through the mobile phone. Today the enemy is in the house which is the phone, because when you the father or mother you go out the child will go and pick your phone. The enemy is already in the house through the internet and all that and the child is engaging better, effective than when they are together,” he pointed out.
