Bongo Senior High School at the weekend celebrated its Second Speech and Prize Giving Day at Bongo under the theme: “Discipline and hard work, prerequisites to academic success”.

The school, which began in 1991 with a population of 50 students, currently has a total population of 995 comprising 529 males and 466 females after attaining a boarding status in 2008.

Prof Thomas Akabzaa, Chief Director at the Ministry of Energy, called for a shared responsibility by parents, teachers and children.

He said the responsibility of ensuring that students were disciplined lied with major stakeholders in education, and that the pervasive indiscipline in schools symbolized a generation traumatized by technology.

“The pillar for ensuring discipline and hard work in a child’s academic life is a shared and collective responsibility by all.”

He said discipline and hard work were character traits acquired by default instilled in children through collective efforts by major stakeholders.

“We have to revisit the carrot and whip approach in our schools, revitalizing school supervision units and ensuring more defined and coordinated roles for traditional authorities, unit committees and the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) in schools’ management” he said.

The Headmaster of the school, Mr Samuel Baba Yafo, said to instill discipline and morality in students, the school had come out with activities to enable notable personalities including retired Education Officers and headmasters, opinion leaders and role models to occasionally speak to the students.

On infrastructure, he said, to be able to accommodate the ever increasing students population in 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 academic years, visual arts four classroom block which served as a library had been converted into a girls dormitory block.

He however stated that, the school had benefited from an emergency six-Unit classroom project from government, and a two-story 12-unit classroom block is currently in use by students.

He further stated that World Vision International, a non-governmental organization, had constructed girls and boys hostels.

Mr Yafo said the lighting system in the school was deteriorating, adding that the cost of maintaining a good lighting system was too high for the school and appealed to the government and benevolent organizations to assist the school.

He appealed to the Ghana Education Service to resource and to equip the school’s science resource centre constructed by the district assembly, adding that the teaching of science had become almost impossible because of the nature of the school’s laboratory.

He explained that, demarcation of the school’s boundaries had been an illusion over the years due to the continuous encroachment by community members who claim ownership of some school lands.

The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Mark Owen Woyongo, commended the school authorities for their strenuous efforts in raising the standards of teaching and learning in the school.

He advised students to desist from indecent acts that had the tendency ruining their lives and preventing them from continuing their education.**