The Mampong Technical College of Education, a training institution for technical teachers, has been closed down following threats by students to destroy school property. All the over 1,000 students have been sent home.
The students were demonstrating against a new directive from the examining body, the University of Cape Coast for all students to write elective mathematics as a compulsory subject, with no alternative course as a substitute. Previously a technical discipline or any other general course was an alternative.
The students smashed louvre blades during the demonstration and sensing danger, the school authorities dispatched all school vehicles for safe keeping at the Mampong District Police station.
Arrest
One student who was arrested for allegedly participating in the destruction, Alex Owusu, has been granted police enquiry bail. The school is also insisting that students who are referred would not be promoted and must rewrite pass and join the next fresh students entering the school in September 2016 year.
However, the students insist that this was not what they were told during admission, especially the compulsory Mathematics and insistence by the authorities that students who failed any subject would not be promoted, as it used to be.
School authorities
According to the Assistant Registrar in charge of Academic Affairs, Mr Kwabena Brempong, school authorities were in discussions with the examining authority, the University of Cape Coast for the way forward.
He explained that the students who have no referred papers to write would come on Monday while those with referred papers would join fresh students in September 2016.
