It is always a great delight to celebrate years of contribution to national growth and development.
Panest therefore congratulates Accra Girls SHS on their 50th Anniversary celebrations which are
summed up the Daily Graphic article below.
Accra Girls SHS contributes to human resource needs
The Accra Girls Senior High School has for the past 50 years made significant contributions to the
production of the requisite human resource needs of the country.
The school was built in 1960 as one of the Ghana Education Trust Schools by Ghana’s first President,
Dr Kwame Nkrumah. The girls’ school, which started with 12 students, has both day and boarding
students.
Today, Accra Girls, which ranks among the top girls’ schools in the country, has a population of 1,100
students with about 50 teaching staff and 51 non-teaching staff. It has three dormitories which
accommodate 720 students, while 20 of its teaching staff live on the campus.
The programmes being offered in the school are: General Arts, Science, Business and Vocational
Skills (Home Economics and Visual Arts).
With the provision of five decades of quality education, the school has lined up a number of activities
to mark its 50th anniversary which began with a launch in October last year.
The year-long event includes a fun fair, games with sister schools, cleanup exercises at the Dzorwulu
Special School and Maamobi Polyclinic, a float through the principal streets of Accra, home-coming
for old girls, fun games for staff and old girls, a dinner dance and variety entertainment night, which
will be climaxed with a speech day and a thanksgiving service in October this year.
A visit to the school revealed that a number of projects were being undertaken to improve and expand
facilities on the compound. They include a two-storey 12-unit classroom block and a new dormitory to
accommodate about 400 students and raising of the wall around the school. These facilities, among
other things, will cater for the first-year students that will be admitted into Form I in September this
year.
At the time Daily Graphic paid a visit to the school, workers were busy at the projects site. They are
expected to finish work before the beginning of the 201O-2011 academic year.
Conducting this reporter round the project facilities, the Headmistress, Ms Veronica Akapame, said
both students and staff residential accommodation had been inadequate, adding that some students had
to commute from as far as Kasewa and around Dodowa to school every day.
She said steps for the construction of a new dormitory and the renovation of a staff bungalow were
being undertaken, and she wished more of those facilities were in place,
On the issue of access to water, she said, the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Dr Mustapha
Ahmed, had promised to solve the problem.
Ms Akapame said the wall was being raised to ensure adequate security, adding that the wall was so
short that people easily scaled ‘it and entered the campus.
Security, she said, had improved greatly with the raising of the wall and the clearing of a grove that
used to serve as hideout for intruders, among other things.
On academic performance, Ms Akapame said, the school’s performance had improved over the years
with 100 per cent results. She said students who passed through the school qualified for tertiary
institution with competitive grades, and that this could be seen in the kinds of professionals the school
had churned out over the years.
“Today, we have past students who are doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, entrepreneurs and
other professionals who have contributed in diverse ways to the development of the country,” she said.
She said discipline had been another hallmark of the school, and that had also resulted in the positive
results of the school.
Ms Akapame commended the old students of the school, Parent-Teacher-Association (PTA) and other
organizations for playing various roles to improve facilities on campus, thereby ensuring effective
teaching and learning.
She said the school would not rest on its current achievements but do more through the provision of
quality education to its students.
Source: Daily Graphic