General News of Sunday, 1 February 2015

Source: starrfmonline.com

Presbyterians can’t head catholic schools - K’si Catholic Archdiocese

The Catholic Archdiocese of Kumasi is protesting the posting of non-Catholics to head its schools in the Ashanti region.

The church says the Ghana Education Service is disregarding an agreement between unit schools and Government on how these schools should be managed.

A partnership of 1999 gives the faith-based educational units the power to monitor, post and transfer teachers with the consent of the Directors of Education.

The church says the GES thus acted in bad faith when it posted a Presbyterian to head the Saint Jerome Senior High School at Abofour in the Offinso Municipality.

The Archdiocesan Development Executive Secretary, Reverend Father Denis Barima told Starr News that the “schools were established for a purpose” so having persons who do not share the church’s principles heading them could defeat that purpose.

The Archdiocese also said it finds it unusual that after teachers were transferred from Catholic Schools under the GES staff rationalisation programme, non-Catholic teachers were being reposted to these same schools.

Rev. Barima thinks this questions “the principles of rationalisation which is to balance the staff strength of various schools”.

The church, however, insists that although it is not against the posting of non-Catholics to its schools, it would appreciate that it is consulted before the postings are done.