Communications team member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Wonder Madilo, has connected the increasing trend of indecent dressing among students to deep-rooted shortcomings in Ghana’s education system.
His remarks follow reports that several students at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), were sent home for violating the institution’s dress code.
The incident has stirred public discourse on student behavior, discipline, and moral standards within tertiary institutions. While some affected students have challenged the university’s actions, claiming unfair treatment, the broader discussion has turned to what is driving such conduct in the first place.
Madilo, speaking on JoyNews’ AM Show, pointed to a lack of structured discipline and grooming efforts within the current educational framework, particularly at the secondary school level. He argued that the decline began when many mission-based schools, which were once run by religious groups like the Catholics, Methodists, and Presbyterians, lost their strong grip on student formation.
These schools, he noted, had traditionally embedded values-based training in their systems, covering everything from personal hygiene and table manners to sanitation and overall grooming. In contrast, modern-day schools often lack such initiatives, with many failing to provide adequate guidance and counselling support to their students.
Madilo believes that this weakening of value-based education has led to growing indiscipline that eventually surfaces in higher education spaces. He sees the incidents in universities as merely a reflection of systemic grooming failures at earlier stages of schooling.
While stressing the need for order and decorum within institutions, he also called for educational authorities, such as UPSA, to handle such matters with fairness, especially when addressing issues involving young women. He encouraged institutions to strike a balanced approach that upholds rules while being sensitive to students’ developmental realities.
The debate over indecent dressing remains a divisive topic in Ghana, with many calling for both stricter enforcement and more thoughtful interventions that consider the root causes.
