It is now common knowledge that the headmaster and senior housemaster of Ghana Senior High School at Koforidua have been suspended for converting a toilet facility into a mode of accommodation for their students. This decision was taken by the Ghana Education Service.
If the leadership of the school took decisions using their discretionary powers with the aim of solving accommodation challenges of the school which they did not create, why must those actually championing the management of Free SHS and education at the national level be at post?
They must also be suspended because head teachers do not provide accommodation but manage what is at their disposal.
It will not be wrong for the government to ask both the Minister of Education and GES Boss to also step aside for investigations to be conducted.
Toilets turned Free SHS Dormitories: Suspend MoE & GES Boss
The Minister of Education and The Director General of Education must also step aside if they believe that per the efforts by the head teacher and his senior housemaster at Ghana Senior High School at Koforidua deserve to be suspended for improvising to get accommodation for students who were placed in their school by the GES and MoE.
The leadership of the MoE and GES must be ready to take responsibility for the actions taken by their subordinates in the school.
If the actions of the head teacher and his senior housemaster had yielded positive results and the entire nation gets to know, the leadership of MoE and GES would have also enjoyed the praises that would have come with it.
In the recent past, the GES has pushed leaders of the various pre-tertiary schools to sign performance agreements that will bind the heads and regional directors, among others.
Although the full facts of the issue are not out, the GES and the MoE, as well as the Nana Addo-led government, need to wake up and own up to the challenges that confront our second-cycle schools.
Heads of public second-cycle schools need to unite and support their very own who have been suspended for taking initiative and making good use of available space in their schools.
All is not well with the Free SHS, and it is time for head teachers and teachers in Free SHS institutions to speak out without being intimidated and express their challenges and frustrations in black and white before they are used by the government as scapegoats for the failure of the government.