Headmistress wants CapeVars to take over University Practice SHS

Ms Paulina Yankah, the Headmistress of the University Practice Senior High School (UPSHS) in Cape Coast, has appealed to the authorities of the University of Cape Coast (UCC) to consider taking over the school from the Ghana Education Service (GES).

According to her, the problem of whether GES or UCC was the rightful parental body overseeing activities of the school had put it at a very disadvantaged position, as most infrastructural development had been hampered.

Mrs. Yankah made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sidelines of the 39th Anniversary and 22nd Speech and Prize-Giving Day celebration of the school in Cape Coast on Saturday.

The celebration was on the theme: “Enhancing Learning For Community Development.”

She explained that making UCC the sole overseer of the school would solve the problem of dual parentage, and pave the way for its numerous challenges to be addressed to achieve academic excellence.

Currently, the two GetFund dormitory projects for boys and girls which was started some years back had stalled making it impossible for the school to be granted a boarding status, the headmistress disclosed.

Other problems she enumerated, included lack of accommodation for teachers, as well as transportation, despite several appeals to the Government

Mrs. Yankah noted that although the school had consistently recorded improvement in the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE), this year’s results was very impressive.

She called for sustained collaborative efforts by all stakeholders in the educational enterprise, as well as policy makers and students for the chosen theme to become a reality to promote quality education in community schools.

Professor Jonathan Fletcher, Dean of the School of Education and Leadership at the University of Ghana, Legon, and the Board Chairman of the school, attributed the persistent abysmal performance of Science and Mathematics at the Senior High School level to inadequate time for students to learn the subjects.

He contended that the four-year SHS program brought remarkable improvement in the performance of students at the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examinations.

He said whereas 49 percent of students wrote the WASSCE in 2012 in the four-year SHS programme, the figure dropped drastically to 25 percent in 2015 when it returned to the three-year system.