Ten students of Agogo State Senior High School (SHS) in the Ashanti Akim North District of the Ashanti Region have been mercilessly beaten by teachers for fetching water outside the school campus.
According to the students, they went to the community near the school to fetch water following water shortage on the campus, and while returning to the campus, the teachers numbering about six called them into a staff room and flogged them.
The students, after being beaten, went home and were sent to the hospital for treatment by their parents.
The students told Abusua FM reporter, King, that this wasn’t the first time such inhumane treatment had been meted out to students for doing no wrong, adding that the teachers are fond of maltreating them.
Some parents in an interview expressed displeasure over the conduct of the teachers and asked the Ghana Education Service to reprimand the teachers.
The Ghana Education Service (GES) in 2019 banned any form of corporal punishment in primary and secondary schools all over Ghana.
In a statement issued by the then Deputy Director General of GES, Anthony Boateng, teachers are expected to use alternative sanctions as measures for correcting students in schools.
“This is in view of the Positive Discipline Toolkit containing positive and constructive alternatives to correcting children developed in 2016 as a component of the Safe Schools Resource Pack.”
The statement added that “apart from the physical pain corporal punishment inflicts on children, this approach also causes significant emotional damage. Some of the lasting effects of this method of disciplining school children include physical scars, emotional scars (trauma, fear, timidity etc.) and violent behaviour.”
Steps suggested in the toolkit to address student behaviour include setting class rules with students, encouraging them to be of good behaviour, getting students to recite statements periodically to confirm their adherence to standards of behaviour set for the classroom.
They also include explaining to the child why a particular behaviour he or she has exhibited is unacceptable.
The toolkit also recommended punishments such as withdrawal of responsibility or removal from a leadership position, cleaning, changing of seating position, assignment of extra tasks and writing of lines, eg. A full book of “I will never talk in class again.”