Demonstrations in Sixth form College

About 70 lower sixth form students from the Dormaa Secondary School (DORMASS) have staged a four-hour demonstration against the school authorities for demanding extra feeding fees from them.

They marched to the office of the Ghana News Agency and complained that although they are on government scholarship, they were being asked to go home and bring an extra feeding fee of C32,000. The leaders of the students said that ever since the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) unilaterally announced a 100 per cent increase in feeding fees, "meals offered us here have been drastically reduced in both quality and quantity". They presented a petition to the District Director of Education, Mr S.H. Baah in his office.

CHASS recently raised feeding fees from C400 per student per day to C800, an increase which the acting Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Mr John Atta-Quayson described as unauthorised and therefore of no effect.

The question being asked therefore is: why are students being asked to go home to collect fees which to all intents and purposes are illegal?