The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) has backed the decision made by Achimota School to deny admitting students because of their dreadlocks.
According to NAGRAT, no school can be compelled by the Ghana Education Service (GES) to admit a student the school deem not fit for admission especially when such an admission will undermine the school’s ethics.
Although Director-General of the GES, Prof Kwasi Opku Amakwa had earlier ordered Achimota School to admit these students, NAGRAT belives Rastafarianism and its beliefs can not be exhibited in Ghana schools.
President of NAGRAT, Angel Carbonu at a press conference in Accra today said the following:
The population of students in Achimota Senior High School is about 4,000 students with about 130 teachers. To be able to manage 4,000 students coming from different homes with different upbringing, different training and different behaviour need to have universal rules and regulation that ought to be followed by all students in school.
We cannot begin, this day, to start making exemptions for individual students based on their belief, based on their culture, based on their tradition, and based on many other issues.
“That will lead to a chaotic school environment. And a chaotic school environment becomes an indisciplined school environment that cannot produce the result that we expect.
NAGRAT totally disagrees with the position of the management of the GES and we are calling on the GES to redirect the headmistress and the staff of the Achimota Senior High School to ensure that the rules and regulations of Achimota School and indeed any other senior high school is abided by every student.”
One does not understand why people want to turn our schools into deregulated institutions where people’s whims and caprices hold way. The school is not a fashion environment, the school is not an environment to exhibit one’s religious beliefs. The school is an environment for training and conformity is part of the training.”
