The Impact of Indecent Dressing on the Academic Performance of Students in Tertiary Institutions, a Case Study of Ho Polytechnic in Ghana

Education is considered to be the bed-rock of development of any nation; hence the call by governments for “education for all”. However, certain developments over the past years seem to be militating against this vision. Notable among them is the craze for the so-called fashion which has resulted in nudity among the teaming youth on Ho Polytechnic campus. This paper therefore sought to investigate the impacts or effects nudity or indecent dressing has on the academic performance of Ho Polytechnic students in Ghana. This was done by employing the descriptive (qualitative) method of research to describe the relationship between variables. The research strategy used was a case study using students (203), teaching (126) and non-teaching staff (21) of Ho Polytechnic as the accessible population. Data were collected for the study by the employment of the survey technique in which 450 questionnaire copies were administered to the accessible population. This was combined with the participant observant approach where indecent dressings were observed and recorded. A main finding of the study is that about 60% of Ho Polytechnic students dress indecently. And out of this, about 80% are females while 20% are males. The study further revealed that provocative dressing or indecent dressing destructs the attention of both students and lecturers during lectures. Also, some leakages of examination questions on Ho Polytechnic campus can be attributed to sexual favours from lecturers as a result of indecent dressing. Key words: Ghana, Ho Polytechnic, indecent, academic performance, student