Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu has opened a fresh national debate on whether Ghana should reconsider its decision to abolish corporal punishment in schools, saying he, President John Mahama and the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) are themselves seeking answers to the question.

Mr Iddrisu raised the issue at the national conference on stemming the growing indiscipline in schools in Sunyani, as education authorities grapple with increasingly serious forms of misconduct in schools.

He said the growing indiscipline could ultimately be reduced to a fundamental question about whether the current disciplinary regime is effective enough to deal with the situation.

“I simply could have reduced my speech, as I intend to, to a question: should we reintroduce corporal punishment?” he asked.

He clarified that the question was not one he was answering on behalf of government, but one that he, the President and the GES leadership were also seeking answers to.

“So President Mahama, Minister Haruna, Director-General Education, in search of answers to this question, when you do answer, so to the media, take it up: should we reintroduce corporal punishment?” he said.

Meanwhile, the question appears to have found some support among participants at the conference.

About ten students and teachers drawn from different senior high schools who attended the conference told JoyNews they supported the reintroduction of corporal punishment as one of the measures for dealing with growing indiscipline in schools. However, the students stressed that safeguards must be introduced to prevent school authorities from abusing the measure or inflicting harm on students.

Teachers who spoke to JoyNews also strongly backed the return of corporal punishment, arguing that the current disciplinary arrangements have not been effective enough in dealing with some serious forms of student misconduct.

Ghana’s move away from corporal punishment in 2017 was accompanied by efforts to promote positive discipline, with the GES and partners including UNICEF developing the Positive Discipline Toolkit to guide teachers and school authorities.

But GES Director-General Prof. Ernest Kofi Davis at the conference admitted that implementation of the alternatives has been weak.

“We have very nice policies, but I don’t think we have implemented them,” he said.

The Education Minister has, meanwhile, made clear that criminal conduct must not be tolerated in schools.