Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Adutwum has warned students from engaging in violence as a medium of communicating their concerns to authorities.
This comes after 43 students from Krobea Asante Technical and Vocational Institute were arrested and prosecuted in January 2023 for destroying school and private properties during a riot. The students were reported to have caused the vandalism to express their displeasure over the poor WASSCE results from their predecessors to the school management.
Following Dr. Adutwum’s four-day tour in the Ashanti region, he expressed his displeasure over such violent acts as he cautioned the students to refrain from such behaviour.
He explained that the views of the students are important and must not be communicated through violence to receive attention.
“People would love to sit down with you and talk to you to resolve your issues, and you do not resolve [with] violence. That, we would not condone and I hope I would never live to hear anything like that from any school again. It is unacceptable that you destroy school’s properties in order to make your voice heard.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Adutwum also stated that efforts made by public schools to transition from the double-track system to the single track system has been effective with about 50% of schools across the nation being successful.
“I believe that we’ve made some great strides after introducing the double-track; attempts have been made to make sure that we can transition schools to single track. A number of schools are in transition to single track, that is why we do not have double enrollment; they all come together as form 1, 2 and 3 students. Over 50% are single track now, which means when school opens they all come together and when school ends they go.”
Dr. Adutwum went on to debunk the perception that was generally held of every school previously practicing double-track system before the emergency intervention.
He further acknowledged the challenges that some schools are facing as they transit from a track system to another.
“But sometimes people think every school is double track but it’s not the case…So in some schools, they’re not found wanting at all, in other emerging schools we still have some challenges, especially where they were single track schools, they grew in enrollment but they never became double track so they were never part of the double-track emergency intervention.”
