The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, has lashed out at parents who treat their children’s education with recklessness and yet spend lavishly on funerals and other social events. He expressed worry over the fact that time and again concerns had been raised over such behaviour but the situation did not seem to change. Speaking with much passion on the issue, the Asantehene noted that students were still falling out of school because of the non-payment of school fees. Meanwhile, he said, their parents managed to raise money to buy new cloths for funerals, parties and other social activities every weekend. “This must stop,” he stressed in a speech at the 36th anniversary and maiden Speech and Prize-giving Day of the Otumfuo Osei Tutu II Senior High School at Tetrem in the Ashanti Region on Saturday. It was on the theme, “Globalisation and Senior High School Education in Ghana: Challenges and the way forward”. A statue of the Asantehene was unveiled as part of activities marking the occasion. Otumfuo Osei Tutu urged parents to show true commitment to the overall development of their children by sacrificing their comfort, bearing in mind that if the children became better placed in future, parents would make good returns from their toils. He asked the students to take their studies seriously and maintain discipline in everything they did and cautioned them to be of good behaviour now that the school had been named after him, so that they did not drag his name and that of Ashanti in the mud. With the vision of establishing a community-based agricultural school to train unemployed youth of the area, some Tetrem citizens started the school with 70 students in October 1975. However, only two years into its running, the government absorbed it and then more courses were added. Between 1996 and 2000, the fortunes of the school, which had the original name of Tetrem Senior Secondary School, dwindled so badly that the student population reduced to only 62, prompting stakeholders to do more to improve the situation. Currently, the school's population is 1,530. The Headmaster of the school, Mr Samuel Ekuoba Gyasi, said while the student population had grown, infrastructure had not improved to commensurate with the numbers. He complained about the lack of a science laboratory, a situation that had resulted in the school having to send its students to the Dwamena Akenten Senior High School in Offinso to do their practical work twice every week. Mr Gyasi said the school’s computer laboratory, with a seating capacity of 35, was woefully inadequate. Among other needs, he appealed for a stand-by generator, explaining that frequent power outages in the school were making life unbearable for both students and teachers. He asked for a new dining hall, school buses and staff bungalows, since only four of the teachers were currently housed on the compound. Mr Gyasi complained about encroachment on the school land earmarked for future development by some citizens of Tetrem and appealed to the chief of the town to stop those encroachers. Source: Daily Graphic/Ghana In a welcome address, the Tetremhene, Nana Osei Kwame II, himself an old student of the school, noted that the school had made steady progress.