Education Ministry’s guidelines for public and mission schools to be out this week

The Ministry of Education will this week come out with a Memorandum of Understanding that will spell out the rules governing the administration of puhlic and mission schools in the country.

The MOU has become necessary after the Methodist Church, Ghana, and the management of Wesley Girls Senior High School disallowed Muslim students from partaking in the Ramadan fast last month.

The decision was widely criticized by many, especially the Muslim community.

Father of Bushira Ismail, a first-year Muslim student of the Cape Coast-based school, Zakariah Alhassan, accused the school authorities of preventing his daughter from engaging in any Islamic activity, including the Ramadan fast which is obligatory for every healthy Muslim.

The school was directed by the Ghana Education Service (GES) to allow the Muslim students to partake in the fast, but the Methodist Church, Ghana, intervened and said the school would not heed the directive.

This generated heated arguments with various stakeholders joining a conversation on religious tolerance.

The Chairperson of the National Peace Council, Rev. Dr. Ernest Adu-Gyamfi, says the MOU to guide the administration of schools in the country will address the concerns of all parties involved, and prevent such issues from recurring.

“We have come to a consensus that there should be an MOU governing all mission schools and public schools in this country, also specifying clearly what are the rights, the privileges and also the responsibilities of every individual who goes to these schools”.

“…And we want these guidelines to be documented and signed by all parties who agree to it so that at the end of the day, once you take that document, everybody knows what can be done and what can’t be done and we believe that if this is pursued to its logical conclusion, this matter will come to an end and Ghana will not face this issue again.”