Use your office to grant dismissed Chiana SHS students pardon – Minority to Akufo-Addo

The Minority in Parliament has asked the Ghana Education Service (GES) to review its decision on the eight dismissed students of the Chiana Senior High School (SHS) in the Kassena-Nankana West District of the Upper East Region.

The Minority wants the GES to review its decision in order to “ensure that the education of the victims is not truncated in this manner.”

In a statement issued and signed by its Ranking Member on Parliament’s Education Committee Peter Nortsu-Kotoe, reacting to the dismissal of the students, the Minority said: “In this age and time when there is increased advocacy and renewed focus on increasing access to education any decision that takes a child away from the classroom can only be seen as an absolute drawback to this renewed focus and objective.”

The Minority noted it is “regrettable to learn of the decision” of the GES to dismiss the eight female students for insulting the President of the Republic some months ago.”

It continued that whereas it is “against the misconduct of the eight students, and condemns same,” the decision by the GES to dismiss them “is harsh and retrogressive.”

The Minority urged the GES to “proffer an alternative but corrective punishment to the eight students.

“This, we believe would be in the best interest of our collective goal to ensuring that every Ghanaian child has access to formal education.”

It also appealed to President Nana Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo “to use his good offices to pardon these students as he did in 2020 when a group of some students misconducted themselves towards him.”

The eight female students were directed to go home based on a letter by the Director-General of the GES, Dr Eric Nkansah.

The said students in a viral video in November 2022, were seen vehemently insulting the President, over his failure to address their school’s challenges and the economy at large.

The GES had launched a probe into the matter after the video of the students, who then in their second year, went viral.

Meanwhile, dismissed students have since rendered an apology to the President in another video, pleading for pardon so they can return to school.