SCHOOL HEADS ATTEND CAPACITY-BUILDING WORKSHOP...In Asunafo-South Disrict (PAGE 11, JAN 21, 2011)

EIGHTY-SEVEN headteachers and headmasters of basic and junior high schools in the Asunafo South District of the Brong Ahafo Region have attended a capacity-building workshop at Kukuom on legal and administrative issues of the Ghana Education Service (GES).
The two subject areas had created a lot of problems and difficulties for headteachers and headmasters as well as teachers and students which had adversely affected teaching and learning in the schools.
For instance, some of the heads arbitrarily dismiss their children without recourse to laid down procedures, while others administer corporal punishment on pupils and students and others are alleged to have sexually assaulted their female pupils or students.
Organised by the Asunafo District Directorate of the GES, the workshop sought to equip the participants with the requisite knowledge of the law and the implications of their actions and inaction, as administrators of their respective schools.
The workshop will also place the school heads in a position that will enable them to educate their teachers on rules and regulations of the GES in order that they do not fall foul of the law.
The Asunafo District Director of the GES, Mr Hayford Kwadwo Osei, who opened the workshop, observed that, the management of human resources was most difficult and complex, considering the dynamic nature of human beings.
To be able to effectively manage the affairs in the schools, he said the participants needed to know that their subordinates and the children alike had their rights which they would go all out to protect, hence the need for them to appreciate the legal framework within which they operated.
The district director pointed out that, some of the legal areas that could engender conflict in the school between the heads and their teachers were issues of leave, promotion, salary increases and upgrading, excursions, football matches, field trips, salary embargoes and deletion of salaries.
He disclosed that the district had taken delivery and distributed 3,000 school uniforms to pupils in deprived areas while over 100,000 exercise books had been distributed to pupils in the district, adding that, this year alone, the district had benefited from the construction of 12 classroom blocks, some of which were either completed or nearing completion.
The Legal Advisor of the GES, Mr Enoch Nurale Yirbeyogr, who facilitated the workshop, reminded the participants that, the time had come for every headteacher to be conscious of the legal regime within which he or she operated.
He said, ‘‘Ghanaians had promulgated a constitution for themselves and had resolved to pursue a democratic system of governance at all levels, be it at the national or at the school level, saying that, being conscious of the legal regime with which one works, entailed being familiar with laws one had to contend with in the daily discharge of one’s duties’’.