The Ghana Education Service (GES) is coming out with stiffer sanctions against heads and teachers of private schools who engage in unruly behaviour in their schools. The sanctions will check behaviours such as sexual harassment and abuse of pupils and students in such schools, among other things. The sanctions would be contained in the reviewed policy guidelines on the establishment of private schools in the country. Mr Charles Parker-Allotey, Head of the Public Relations Unit of the GES who made this known to the Daily Graphic, did not give details of the sanctions but said they “would be biting”. He said the current guidelines for private schools did not include sanctions and that constituted a constrain on the GES as it made it impossible for the service to take action against private school teachers or heads who behaved indecorously. Presently, Mr Parker-Allotey said the GES could only take disciplinary actions or sanction staff of the service as there was a code of discipline designed for all of them. He pointed out that the present policy guidelines for private schools only dealt with environmental issues, among other things. A copy of the guidelines made available to the Daily Graphic for example said the categories of schools that could be established under the GES included basic level schools, second cycle schools, technical and vocational institutes, pre-tertiary professional institutes and computer schools. It said the GES approved and registered schools based on need and also the quality of resources put in place to run them, adding that the resources included physical structures such as classrooms, offices and washrooms. Others, it said, were teachers and auxiliary staff, teaching and learning materials as well as general sanitation and conduciveness of the location of the school. “The prospective proprietor or proprietress should mass up these resources as a first step in the establishment process,” the guidelines stated. But Mr Parker-Allotey said “we are going to review the current guidelines to include sanctions”. Over the past couple of months, there have been media reports of either a head or a teacher of a private school engaging in one form of sexual act against their students. Most of those matters have ended up in the courts. Source: Daily Graphic