The executive director of African Education Watch has blamed the cause of indiscipline that has recently been reported day in day out on the positive discipline toolkit that was thrown to teachers by the Ghana Education Service.
Speaking on the last week bullying which later lead to death in Konongo Odumasi senior high school, Mr. Kofi Asare believes that positive discipline toolkit which had banned punishment in Schools has made teachers drawback and watch students do whatever they want.
According to Mr. Asare, the Ghana Education Service has adequate rules on paper but it is not working properly in schools and bullying has taken over schools with any control. Teachers now has a feeling that authority has been taken away from them and for that matter they will only come and teach and go away and for students to do what ever the want.
To him, Teachers have been less motivated to ensure that there is a discipline in schools because of the policy that has banned corporal punishment. The acceptance of the policy is very low and those students are in the custody of their teachers which has given up on the disciplinary policy that was instituted by GES. That is exactly what is happening in the schools now.
The Public Relations Officers PRO of the Ministry of Education admitted that the ministry was concerned about Teachers’ acceptance of the policy. He said they could have done more stakeholder consultation with the teachers.
He said it is quite unfortunate that a lot of teachers had misconceptions about the disciplinary policy because discipline is not about inflicting pain on someone.
