By Afedzi Abdullah, GNA
Accra, July 22, GNA – A Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA), University of Cape Coast (UCC) has said disciplinary processes and measures throughout the school system must aim at correcting behaviors.
Thus, he said any disciplinary process without educational intervention might not be the best for the development of students and therefore should not be encouraged.
Dr Boakye Yiadom who made the assertion at the 19th Speech and Prize Giving Day celebration of the University of Cape Coast (UCC) Junior High School on Thursday, reiterated that corporal punishment did not necessarily change behavior.
He has called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) and other education stakeholders to review the current disciplinary processes and explore more alternative disciplinary measures to ensure that they were corrective enough to change behavior.
The celebration was on the theme: “Adopting positive disciplinary tools in Ghanaian Educational system: an alternative measure to corporal punishment”
Dr Boakye Yiadom said the disciplinary processes must be in a child-friendly manner that did not submerge the easy flow of teacher/student communication to create a conducive environment for easy teaching and learning.
He indicated that students’ characteristics have changed over time and as such corporal punishment which caused bodily pain to students could no longer serve the purpose of correcting a child’s behavior.
“We have had enough of the canning but still we have indiscipline in our schools. There are better ways of punishing children. We need not to take children for granted. They are very resourceful, let support them,” he said.
According to him, one punishment might not prove effective for all children and encouraged teachers to show love to their students, understand and know them and the kind of punishment that would best help shape their behavior.
Professor Joseph Ghartey- Amapiah, Vice Chancellor of UCC in a speech read on his behalf by Professor Josephine Sam-Tagoe, encouraged parents and guidance to collaboratively work with teachers for the benefit of their children.
He said it was only when teachers and parents have known and performed their respective roles that the child could be holistically molded and developed to become a useful member of society.
Mrs Kate Frimpong, the Headteacher of the School, said the School by dint of hard work, had made enviable strides and was determined to achieve more but faced some infrastructural challenges which needed to be addressed.
She said the school needed a library complex, science laboratory and equipment, Technical workshop and store room for keeping teaching and learning materials.
She said the school’s Stream “A’ maintained its first position on the 2018 Regional Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) performance league table with school “B” placing second while the School “C” and ‘D” and “E” placed 6th,14th and 23rd respectively out of over 100 schools.
Mrs Frimpong said 261 students were presented for the 2019 BECE and expressed the hope that they would continue the success story.
Mr Philip Kwesi Incoom, Cape Coast Metropolitan Director of Education, said the Ministry of Education (MoE) was encouraging positive disciplinary processes where teachers would use dialogue, counseling, constructive criticism and reprimands to correct students.
GNA
AT/DSA
July 22, 2019
