Many Parents are storming RIIS Presbyterian School in Koforidua this morning after management reintroduced the temporal shift system following the displacement of nearly 400 students.
The angry parents say they were not consulted neither officially communicated about the challenge and the decision by management.
For them, they are workers who do not stay home therefore leaving the children at home in the morning because of the shift system is a great worry.
A parent who gave her name as Akosua said ” my daughter came home to inform me that they said from tomorrow she should come to school from 12 noon and close at 4:30 pm. I think this is inconvenient for me and my children. We are workers so how can we leave these Children home. The worrying aspect is that nobody communicated to us they rather told the children to inform us”
Meanwhile, the PTA Chairman Eric Obeng, said the school has an upcoming PTA meeting that management will take advantage of to communicate to them.
Ascension Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana in Koforidua evicted the Junior High School students of RIIS Presbyterian Basic “B” school from a building which was being used as classrooms.
The building was released to the school by the church for temporal use as classrooms for the Junior High School students about seven years ago however government has failed to construct a permanent classroom for the school.
A GETFUND project started by former MP Dr.Mark Asibey Yeboah has been abandoned for years .
The church , therefore lost patience hence has reclaimed the building displacing the students
Teachers and the displaced JHS students resumed school Tuesday January 18,2021 only to see their classrooms being converted into office accommodation with the desks removed outside.
Nana Yaw Debrah Assembly Member for Asuofiri electoral area where the school is situated said the situation is worrying.
“We got here in the morning around 6:30 am, when we came there were some ongoing renovation works on one of the school building block.
The issue is that , the church offered the building to the school for temporal use, but now the time period seems to expire so the church now wants to occupy the building back.
RIIS school has been categorized into three, that is A, B and C but the issue was specifically pertaining to B and so the block was being occupied by the B junior high students”
The Assembly Member continued “but now that the church wants to occupy the building back, then it means that these children will be forced to sit under the tree or study under the sun , but this will affect the children academics because they need serene and friendly environment with sound minds to learn as children.
This is the more reason why there are a lot of officials from GES to storm the school premises to urgently plan to find a place to to this children.It is always hardly to complete the syllabus so with the introduction of the shift system will make it even more difficult for most teachers to complete the syllabus”.
As emergency measure , management of RIIS Presby ” B” Basic School and Ghana Education Service have reintroduced a shift system for the lower primary to enable the JHS students improvise their classrooms.
But the assembly member is worried “With the shift system, the students will enjoy a maximum of two to three hours in school including break time and other activities, but when they are together without the shift system they will have to spend more then three hours and this will not help us to achieve our objectives.
This will be a disadvantage to the school and also the municipality as well, so who then should be blamed if the school produce bad results” .
The New Juaben South Municipal Director of Education Victor Degraft Etsison told the media ,the emergency measure rolled out is not reintroduction of shift system.
He said it is temporal arrangements to improvise the lower primary classroom facilities to enable the JHS students get classrooms for uninterrupted learning as the final years prepare for BECE .
The Municipal Education Director however appealed to GETFUND to complete an abandoned classroom block project in the school .
Source: Mybrytnewsroom.com/Obed Ansah
