Ghanata SHS headmistress under fire as parents claim students were Police-handed without notice

Families of four final-year students at Ghanata Senior High School have launched a scathing attack on the school’s headmistress, alleging that she bypassed parental involvement entirely when addressing an alleged dining hall theft, instead turning the teenagers over to law enforcement without warning.

The four students found themselves in police custody on Friday, June 12, 2026, after accusations emerged that they had pilfered food from the school’s food service facility.

The parents contend they were kept entirely in the dark about these developments.

Samuel Amanor, speaking as the voice of the aggrieved families to Citi News, laid bare the frustration coursing through their households.

The standard expectation, he argued, was that school management would reach out to parents first, creating an opening for dialogue and the possibility of settling matters without involving the criminal justice system.

Instead, the headmistress acted unilaterally, depositing the students in the hands of uniformed officers and allowing them to languish in a police cell — a turn of events the parents viewed as both heavy-handed and procedurally improper.

“We were expecting the headmistress to call us the parents and brief us so we find an amicable solution. However, we the parents were sidelined and she handed over the kids in her care to the police and they were locked up in the cell,” Amanor said.

The financial dimension of the ordeal added insult to injury. The parents were initially presented with a staggering bill: GH¢24,000 was demanded for the students’ release — a sum far beyond what most families could quickly produce. Eventually, after negotiations, parents managed to scrape together GH¢8,000, which secured the teenagers’ freedom on Saturday.

The case has sparked broader questions about school discipline procedures and whether institutions have overstepped in routing disciplinary matters through the criminal system rather than exhausting internal channels first.

Yaw Opoku Amoako

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