Stories from Ernest Best Anane
The Agogo State Senior High School (SHS) has celebrated its 50th Anniversary, with a call on the government and stakeholders to help expand the infrastructural facilities of the school.
The theme of the celebration was: “50 years of Discipline and Steady Academic Progress – The Role of the stakeholders.”
The Headmaster of the School, Dr. Alexis Frimpong Nimoh, said at the Speech and Prize Giving Day ceremony that though the school was 50 years, headmasters had, all these years, been living in a rented house two kilometres away in town.
He complained that there was no accommodation for the two Assistant Headmasters (Academic and Domestic) on campus, a situation which makes the administration of the school and control of students very difficult and ineffective.
He also bemoaned accommodation problem for teachers, saying of the 98 teachers, only seven were resident on campus.
According to him, a block of flats for the teachers, which was started in 1977, was abandoned in 1979, and called for its reactivation to address the acute accommodation problem of teachers at the school.
He said the school population had increased tremendously, but did not have adequate classrooms for the growing population.
This, he said, had resulted in some classes being too large to handle for any serious academic work. The situation, he said, would require an additional 15-unit classroom block to help absorb the 2013/ 2014 academic year batch of fresh students, in order to reduce overcrowding in the classrooms.
Besides the school has no Assembly Hall, and that morning devotions and other gatherings of the school are all held in the open, at the mercy of the weather.
Dr. Nimoh also stated that the school was coping with a make-shift library, which takes only 30 students at a time, and therefore, needed a modern library to enhance the academic activities of the school.
He said because of lack of dormitories, the ground floor of the administration block had been converted into a dormitory, and hoped the government would release funds for the contractor to speed up work on the construction of the new 3-storey boys’ dormitory.
According to him, the school had not benefited from the supply of vehicles to schools in recent times, and underscored that a donation of a bus to the school as a birthday present would be very much appreciated.
Edmond Peprah, the School Prefect, complained that the school was constantly being hit by perennial water problems which were affecting studies.
He appealed to philanthropists, non-governmental organisations and the Ghana Education Trust Fund to provide the school with a KIA truck or water tanker to supply water whenever there is a shortage.
Mr. Samuel Yaw Adusei, Deputy Ashanti Regional Minister, represented the President, John Dramani Mahama, at the occasion.