All schools must have standard rules to avoid discrimination - Kwesi Pratt to GES

Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr. has called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to set standard rules for all educational institutions in Ghana.

Kwesi Pratt was worried that different schools have different rules, stressing such culture is the reason for the divisions and discriminations in schools.

"Let's be careful so we don't have a situation where everyone sets up his or her school. It won't augur well for us," he stated.

He was commenting on the protest by a parent of a Rasta student against the decision of Achimota School to enroll his son.

Two students with dreadlocks were refused enrolment into the Achimota school and the school will only accept them when they cut their hair.

The school's decision have courted controversy with the general public arguing for and against it.

The parent's agitation led the Ghana Education Service (GES) to, on Friday, direct the Achimota school to admit the students but in a further meeting with the school and the parents of the Rasta students on Monday, March 22, the GES rescinded its decision.

The GES has upheld the policy of Achimota school that the students must cut their dreadlocks before they are accepted into the school.

Father of the student, Ras Aswad Nkrabea has threatened to take the matter to ''court and there's no question about that. We are trying to find another school now for him''.

He added; "I was shocked at the decision of the GES today after last Friday's directive."

Kwesi Pratt has asked the GES to heed his advice to set common rules for all schools so as to encourage unity in the education sector.

"We don't have standard rules for all educational institutions. So, there are some rules which belong to a particular school but when you leave that school to another, the rules may be different. I think it's about time the Ghana Education Service and our legislators meet and enact standard rules for all schools . . . All schools have to have a common basic understanding of what education is, what the curriculum is, what the rules ought to be and so on so there will be no discrimination," he said on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo".