Urgently, the “deterioration of discipline” in Ghanaian schools, “particularly, on the campuses of our secondary schools,” must be addressed, Builsa South MP Dr Clement Abas Apaak has said.

Speaking to Kwame Dwomoh-Agyemang on Class 91.3 FM’s Class Morning Show, he said this must be recognised as the shared responsibility of school managers and parents.

After rebuking parents who confront teachers for disciplining their errant wards, and noting some even go as far as “mobilising people to attack” school authorities, he underlined the importance of parents joining hands with teachers to ensure discipline on the country’s various campuses.

Thus, he decried what he termed the relegation of the Parent & Teacher Associations since “the introduction of the Free Senior High School policy” by the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) led by President Nana Akufo-Addo.

“They are now called PAs [Parent Associations] minus the teachers,” Dr Apaak observed.

Worryingly, he questioned: “How do you do that and expect for there to be a collective resolve to ensure the students behave themselves properly when you’re not allowing the teachers to interact with the parents, where they can present the issues and perhaps alert parents to deviant students and the kinds of things do they with the hope that while the school authorities are playing their role the parents are also playing theirs?”

This will be rectified by the next National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration the lawmaker assured.

“We’re going to reinstate the PTAs to perform the duties they used to perform in the past because parents must necessarily be a component of managing the schools,” he asserted.

He charged: “You can’t relegate them and say parents should form voluntary associations on their own without the teachers. Does that even make sense?”

Dr Apaak denounced the FSHS policy resulting in a situation where “the PTAs have almost lost the weight and influence they’ve always had, and that regular interaction with school authorities which helped to keep the system running”.

He reflected on the recent stabbing of a student by his fellow at O’Reilly Senior High School, Accra, a student who attempted “strangling the life out of another,” at Adisadel College, Cape Coast, and, in the Volta Region, per his recollection, students assaulting a teacher to the point of him “bleeding”.

“These are stories that we should be hearing occurring in ghettos and not in a secondary school, not on campus,” he admonished.

The Deputy Ranking Member on the Education Committee of Parliament passionately warned if Ghanaian forms of discipline are not put in the place of adopted Western styles of discipline, “promoted by donor agencies,” increasingly disturbing news will keep coming from campuses, including the use of offensive weapons.

A respected statesman, he spoke about his rather unflattering behaviour as a child.

“I was not an easy child, I was a difficult child, a very aggressive one at that, I did all manner of things,” he confessed, noting he would have become worst “if not for discipline” from home and at school.

He recalled an unforgettable instance where his mother “whipped” him in front of an assembly of students at a “middle school in Wa” he attended, where she also taught.  

“I got a top-up whipping at home [also],” he added.

Dr Apaak spoke about carrying “firewood on my head [across] a distance of about five kilometres for a whole week” because “during an altercation,” he “shoved the Senior Girls Prefect” while in Senior High School.

Testifying about the power of discipline for reformation, he asked, “Did I die? I become a better person.”

Ghana goes to the polls on Saturday, December 7, to choose, mainly, between the NPP's Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and the NDC's John Dramani Mahama.