Veep Advises GES

Vice-President Aliu Mahama has called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to use its Guidance and Counselling Unit to check the increasing spate of indiscipline in schools. He said there was the need for GES to protect students and on no account should it allow the dignity of disciplined students to be trampled upon by a few undisciplined ones among them.
     
This was contained in a speech read on his behalf at the Fourth Speech and Prize-Giving day of Kumasi High School in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region at the weekend. The event was under the theme 'A Disciplined Student-An Asset in National Development'.
     
Vice President Mahama expressed hope that Ghana will surely succeed if students are disciplined. 'A disciplined student invariably turns out to be a disciplined adult. A disciplined adult does not take part in nefarious acts like bribery and corruption'.
     
He said one thing that saddens him was the dressing of students in recent times. 'From the Universities to our Junior High Schools, their mode of dressing leaves much to be desired,' he said.
     
'My dear students, discipline is more than just respect. The way you dress, the way you carry yourself, your approach to your colleagues all add up to how disciplined you are,' he added.
     
Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, who is an alumnus of the school, urged the students to comport themselves at all times because whatever they do has a reflection on the image of the school.
     
He advised them not to be complacent but rather work hard to achieve good results, stressing the need for them to take active interest in Information, Communication and Technology education to enhance their potentials in life.
     
Mr Baah-Wiredu announced that a staff bungalow, a four-storey block of 18 classrooms and a bus would be provided to the school.
     
Mrs Belinda Serwah Addo, Ashanti Regional Director of Education, in an address read on her behalf, stressed the need for parents, teachers and school authorities to complement each other to inculcate moral values in students, not only by precepts but also by examples of their own self.
     
She said the evils of drugs, occultism, indecent dressing, fake certificates and pornography had become worrying phenomena for authorities and parents and hoped that students would be guided by the motto of the school, 'Truth Conquers', now and after they have left the school.