Parents of students in Category ‘A’ SHS must pay fees

The new headmaster of Oda Senior High School (ODASCO), Eric Amoah, has proposed that parents of students who choose Category ‘A’ SHSs from next year must pay for everything while those in Category ‘B’ pay for some of the cost such as accommodation or feeding.

He, however, suggested that those students in Category ‘C’ benefit totally from the free SHS policy.

Mr Amoah, who is also the National President of Agriculture Teachers Association of Ghana, made the proposal at an induction service in his honour at Akyem Oda last Friday as the 12th headmaster of ODASCO.

He said “This my proposal may sound discriminating and controversial, but if fine-tuned and implemented well, these financial resources gathered from the Category ‘A’ schools would be used to develop Categories ‘B’ and 'C’ institutions so that every year at least three schools in Category ‘B’ that excel in academics and discipline and have the right infrastructure are promoted from Category ‘B’ to ‘A.”

Mr Amoah said by that arrangement, more schools would strive to obtain Category ‘A’ status rather than maintaining a few schools as Category ‘A’ schools for years, adding that the same would be done with schools under different categories.

He stated that by that arrangement, parents’ choice of any particular SHS for their children would be determined by one’s ability to pay or otherwise.

Mr Amoah said the suggested system, if implemented, would also ensure that no school was left behind in infrastructural development.

School farms

He appealed to the Minister of Food and Agriculture to collaborate with the Ministry of Education to support schools with arable lands with the right inputs and labour to venture into large-scale farming to support the school feeding programme and also serve as learning centres to arouse the interest of the youth in agriculture.

Mr Amoah said as the lead writer of Agricultural Science of the new curriculum and the President of the Agriculture Teachers Association of Ghana, he would advise President John Mahama to hasten slowly in the implementation of the new curriculum for SHSs as that would add to the woes of the nation.

Education intervention

He stressed that the school's staff had teamed up with the Parent-Teacher Association to introduce Saturday intervention classes from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. as a measure of attaining academic excellence.

The headmaster noted with concern that there was no Category ‘A’ SHS in the whole Akyemansa enclave. He promised to work hard for ODASCO to attain a Category A status before the school celebrated its 70th anniversary in the year 2030.

The Member of Parliament (MP) for Oda, Mr Alexander Akwasi Acquah, who is an old student of ODASCO, promised to do all he could to help develop the institution.

He announced that he had personally reroofed the girls’ dormitory block, which had its roof ripped off sometime ago.

The ceremony, which was jointly chaired by the Principal of Methodist College of Education, Very Rev. Solomon Kwame Gyamerah and the Principal of the Oda Community Health Training College, Dr Jones Baah-Abekah, attracted many dignitaries.