Kade Free SHS More Expensive Than Cash and Carry (part 1)…Students Put Under Whip To Raise Funds For Assembly Hall

The educational infrastructural deficit that is well known to be a serious bottleneck to the implementation of the Free Senior High School (FSHS) program is taking a slavish toll on students of the Kade Senior High School (KASSTECH).

A lack of an Assembly Hall in the school located in the Kwaebibirem Municipality of the Eastern Region has come to mean that the hapless students there must pay through the nose to have the Assembly Hall built.

Under President Akufo-Addo’s Free SHS, KASSTECH students have envelopes foisted on them at the end of every term with the requirement that they fill them with at least ghc10 each before they return to school.

A month long investigation conducted at the school revealed that students who do not return from vacation with cash in the envelopes are whipped and disallowed entry into classes.

For a long time, these students and their parents have borne the extortionate set-up in silence fearing that if they cry out to the rest of Ghana which has been made to believe that secondary education is now absolutely free, they will be victimized the more.

Head teacher of the school, Emmanuel Danquah, has since justified the exaction of the cash from the students saying, “Free SHS doesn’t mean that everything is being paid for by the school.”

In a phone interview, Mr. Danquah also claimed that the extortionate exaction from the students was not instituted by the school’s administration but by the Student’s Representative Council (SRC) of the school. He however admits that he gave his blessing to the idea of milking students to build an Assembly Hall at KASSTEC under Free SHS.

What’s Up News has heard from some unhappy teachers that the financial burden put on students to build the Assembly Hall has not been sanctioned by the School’s Board Chaired by Madam Cecilia Obenewaa.

After Mr. Emmanuel Danquah had given his initial reaction on the matter on phone, he had invited us to Kade for documentary evidence in proof that the Assembly Hall project is solely the idea of the school’s SRC. However, when we got there, he did not show any evidence. Rather, he demanded that we drop the story.

Upon our refusal to kill the story, he refused us access to the SRC leadership, the school’s Board and the PTA for interviews.

It has since become clear that the extortionate levying of students to build the school’s Assembly Hall is just a small part of system of extortions that has been set up by the Headmaster and the some of his teaching staff to milk students.

Teachers have set up shops all over the campus of KASSTECH and are selling all sorts of things, including elective text books that must only be bought from the shops owned by teachers.

At KASSTECH, the Headmaster has also allegedly set up a uniforms sales monopoly by which he sells uniforms in his office that form three students of the school must compulsorily buy.

More anon.

Source: What’s up News