The Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) has sent a distress call to the government and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to reschedule the reopening date for first year students of Senior High Schools (SHSs). The new date, the CHASS said, should be realistic and appropriate to ensure that most classrooms, boarding and furniture problems facing the SHSs would have been addressed by that date. In a communiqué issued at the end of their 48th annual conference of CHASS and signed by Mr Felix Effah-Hienno, National Secretary of CHASS, the headmasters said almost all the 495 senior high schools faced serious and precarious classroom and dormitory accommodation problems. After extensively and exhaustively deliberating on the theme of the conference, which was "Quality SHS Education - A Prerequisite For National Development", the headmasters said first year students whose placement had been released by the Computerised School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) would have no accommodation. The CHASS, therefore, called for a presidential directive to all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to immediately take charge of all ongoing SHS classroom and dormitory accommodation to get them ready possibly by the end of October. The Headmasters were of the view that until such a time that the SHS education could be free, the government should review all fees such as feeding and clothing to reflect the prevailing market prices, since the present fees payable were fixed six years ago. According to CHASS, the proposed presidential directive should enjoin all MMDAs to make sure that any of the public SHSs in which classrooms had not been started were provided with pavilions in four weeks, as a matter of urgency. "In order to shape the future of our teeming youth towards strategic national development, we are advocating that the government, without delay, put in place a state policy on education, which can stand the test of time rather than what we have been experiencing," the communiqué stated. Source: Daily Graphic/Ghana