Addressing school authorities -students relationship important

 Dear Editor

 The  behaviour of the Assistant Headmaster of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Senior High School who was recently dismissed by the Ghana Education Service (GES) for fondling a female student should serve as a wake up call for stakehold­ers in our education sector.

Although I find what transpired be­tween him and the student that was captured on video unfortunate, I am of the view that the decision taken by the GES was a good one.

However, I believe that the inci­dent that led to the dismissal of the Assistant Headmaster is one of many of such incidents that happens in our junior and senior high schools and have not been taken notice of.

There are instances where some female students complain about issues such as sexual harassment by their teachers and headmasters but no action had been taken.

My question then is, for how long should we wait for videos of such incidents to go viral before an action is taken?

I think it is about time that the GES collaborates with key stakehold­ers in the educational sector, in­cluding Parents Teacher Associations (PTA), school authorities, and civil society organisations to address such issues.

It will be important for appro­priate measures such as strict mon­itoring of the relationship between students and school authorities.

Secondly, young learners must be empowered to report such incidents to school authorities. Sometimes, they go unreported because the chil­dren fear they might be victimised.

Establishing these kind of mea­sures would not only help address the issue but also protect the mental health of students who suffer from these harassment from their teachers and school authorities or even se­niors.

Instead, the headmistress/head­masters and teachers should advise the children on why they were in the school first.

Raising the children is first and foremost a key responsibility of parents but we also understand that these children spends more time in the school environment than the home, except the weekends.

That places a huge responsibility on them as trained teachers to help in shaping the lives of these learners.

Abraham Moore,

Ekumfi