Discipline equated with aggregate six in the SSS exams

Akropong (Ash), July 11, GNA - Professor Kwesi Andam, Vice-Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has told students who want to study at the university that discipline is as important as obtaining aggregate six in the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSSCE).

He said KNUST prefers a student with a good moral character with aggregate 12 to a bad student with aggregate six. Professor Andam said the University was therefore watching all schools and will swiftly blacklist any school where intolerant behaviour of students was found.

He was speaking at the 64th Founders' Day and the first speech and prize-giving day of Osei Tutu Secondary School at Akropong in Ashanti on Saturday.

The celebration of the day was on the theme: "Discipline, a Pre-requisite For Spiritual, Moral and Academic Excellence".

The Vice-chancellor said indiscipline in schools was becoming a habitual occurrence, while delinquency, hooliganism, alcoholism, truancy, drug abuse are prevalent in many educational institutions. "These adverse practices act as platforms for the development of social vices, which, if not curbed will consistently undermine and erode the norms and traditions that uphold our society", he said.

The Very Reverend Peprah Yeboah, Headmaster of the school, in his report, said the school had an enrolment of 1,388, but that a few have been withdrawn based on repeated misconduct and truancy and has 43 permanent teaching staff.

He said in spite of the high teacher-student ratio, the school has only 17 classrooms instead of about 33 required to create the needed conditions for effective teaching and learning.

Rev. Yeboah noted that as a result of student behaviour and the apparent license for students to do what they like, the image of the school has been severely marred.

The Headmaster therefore, called on the chiefs and opinion leaders in the community to help eradicate the canker of indiscipline in the school rather than allowing nepotism and personal relations with recalcitrant and incorrigible students to derail the new impetus and momentum of change.

Mr Collins Asafo-Agyei, prefect of the school, in his report said there is the need for more dormitories to accommodate day students as a way to control them since they constitute majority of students.