Three days ago the authorities of the Achimota senior high asked two Rastafarian students to go back and cut their hair as it is against the code of conduct of the Ghana education services to attend senior high school with such kind of hairstyles.
Due to public outcry and uproar the management of the Ghana education services gave a directive yesterday to the authorities of the Achimota senior high to allow those two Rastafarian students to attend the school.
Reacting to this on Big issues Mr. Angel Cabonu The president of the National association of graduate teachers (NAGRAT) said he is shocked and disappointed at the position of the management of the Ghana education services directive to Achimota senior high school authorities to allow the two Rastafarian in the school.
Mr. Angel Carbonu said “I disagree with it. I am surprised and very disappointed that the Ghana Education Service bent the rules for these Rastafarians. When the Ghana Education Service begins to make these exceptions, they create chaotic situations in the school for we the teachers to manage. If you stretch the frontiers of this, you will have problems so they didn’t have to limit it to only Rastafarians,”
He added that the school did not deny the students admission but only asked the students to go back and cut their hair as it is not allowed to school with such kind of hairstyles but the position of the Ghana education services to allow those Rastafarian students to go to school is very disappointing and he disagrees with them.
“I disagree with it. I am very disappointed in the management of the GES and I disagree with the directive to the school. The students were in the first place not denied admission. What the school authorities just said as a student of the school you can’t have this hair so cut it”, he said.
He further noted that the directive of the Ghana education services to allow those students to attend school is welcomed and it is in line with our Constitution to allow students from all regious back ground to attend school.
“We welcome the directive from the GES, and we think that it is consistent with our constitution and our achieving to international conventions and our own educational plan that seeks to ensure by 2020 that every child of school-going age in Ghana completes the full cycle of school in respect of ethnicity, race, gender, religion etc. It’s a victory for our constitution, it’s a victory for our rule of law and a victory for education for all and a pat on all of us to ensure that our education is inclusive and non-discriminatory.”