President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Kwasi Gyamfi, has slammed the Education Minister, Haruna Iddrisu, for inviting churches to help tackle indiscipline in schools after, he says, they were chased out.

In an interview sighted by GhanaWeb, he described the meeting as “disheartening”, saying the cause of rising indiscipline in schools should be clear to the minister, not something he should ask people to identify.

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“So, you see, recently, the Minister of Education, because of the rise of indiscipline in the schools, called a meeting of all stakeholders.

“He called the churches also to be there for us to find out why there is indiscipline in the schools and, to say the least, I found it very disheartening that a whole minister would not know why there is rising indiscipline in the schools,” he said.

Bishop Gyamfi maintained that discipline does not develop on its own but must be taught through proper guidance and character formation.

He argued that schools should not focus only on academic excellence but must also ensure that students learn values that will shape their conduct.

“They do not come by accident. They come by teaching the children. You must have people to teach them these values, in addition to academic excellence, but if you don't teach them and you just leave it like that, then you are wondering why there is indiscipline,” he stated.

He further questioned the decision to invite the churches to discuss the problem, saying they were among the very institutions that had previously helped instill discipline.

“And to invite the very people they have chased out, who were doing these things, to come and discuss why. So, if they know it, and they want to do it, they want to instill discipline and uproot indiscipline to promote human formation, to change all of these things,” he added.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference president concluded that the meeting was unnecessary because the solution to indiscipline, in his view, was already clear.

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“I think that was, I would say, a meeting you should not have called at all, because the answer is what? It's obvious,” he said.

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