Concerned Parent Of Christ The King International School Petitions The Metropolitan Archbishop

I am writing as a very concerned parent of Christ the King International, School, Accra and wish to plead with the Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, His Grace Charles Gabriel Palmer-Buckle to urgently intervene and rectify certain disturbing trends at the school.

This open letter has become necessary because several calls for issues to be addressed both at PTA and management levels have gone unheeded. I would like to highlight these critical areas that in my humble opinion need immediate attention.

Each class has on the average 47 pupils and several calls to school management to keep the numbers down have gone unheeded. Indeed the school authorities even keep admitting students in the course of the school term in some instances. These large class sizes mean that parents have to forge special relationships with teachers so that their wards can get the needed attention.

This is very worrying especially at a time that the Accra Metropolitan Authority has announced that their Model Millennium Schools would have class sizes of 40 pupils. If public schools are aiming for class sizes of 40, then a school like Christ the King should strive to do same or better.

The number of toilets is woefully inadequate not to talk of the insanitary conditions in the washrooms. With a student population of over 800, the school has less than 20 toilets to cater for students. Several calls have been made to the management over the past few years but the same situation exists. In addition the area designated for holding the schools refuse bins constantly has garbage strewn all over the floor and its immediate environs thereby exposing the students to all manner of health hazards.

The entire school building/block itself is in urgent need of painting and a lot of classroom windows have missing louvre blades and dirty curtains. I wonder how much it will cost to replace these louvre blades and wash/change the curtains periodically. Several of the classroom furniture also needs replacement or fixing.

It is evident that there is a lack of decisive leadership in the school and this was manifest in the poor and haphazard manner in which some school events were organized during the last term of the 2013/2014 academic year. Two examples immediately come to mind.

First, the Chairman for an important school function was only informed about the event 15 MINUTES before the official commencement.

Needless to say the event could not start on schedule because the chairman was late. Second, during the last Speech and Prize Giving Day, deserving students were giving BLANK sheets of paper neatly rolled up as prizes. As it stands now these students do not have any “official record” of what they were awarded prizes for. I believe even a simple certificate would have sufficed.

There are several other issues especially regarding discipline among both students and teachers which I will say without hesitation are as a result of weak leadership. As an example the school rules states explicitly that students are NOT ALLOWED to bring money to school.

However there are several instances where teachers ask students to bring money to pay for items such as educational books, CD’s or supplies. I would have thought that even if such items are to be sold, it should be done with the express permission of the headmistress and through the school’s general office.

Some of us are of the view that Christ the King School is a forerunner and the last bastion of sound, Catholic education at the basic level. We cannot sit unconcerned.

A concerned parent