Kusanaba Senior High School calls for support

The Kusanaba Senior High School in the Bawku West District is battling infrastructure deficit and needs immediate government and donor Agency intervention to survive as a second cycle educational institution.

Since its inception as a Senior High School in 1991, it has not received any significant infrastructural development to enhance teaching and learning.

Mr Anthony Nkumfo, Headmaster of the school who disclosed this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Kusanaba said the school has a student population of about 1,408 made up of 766 boys and 642 girls with 31 teaching staff.

The Headmaster said the school was confronted with challenges such as; classrooms, students and staff accommodations, transportation, administration block, and laboratories for science and Information Communication Technology (ICT).

Mr Nkumfo mentioned other ones as; a library block to enhance research and promote teaching and learning and emphasised that the study of ICT was prime because it had become an indispensable discipline that was moving the world.

He indicated that the school had six teachers’ bungalows that housed only eleven teachers, while the rest of the staff lived outside the school, thereby making enforcement of discipline difficult in the school.

He explained that due to inadequate accommodation to house all the students, those who lived in the community and nearby villages were made day students.

This he indicated was a challenge to the school authorities to check the movement of students in the school as it was difficult to identify them as result of their numbers.

The Headmaster lamented the lack of a science laboratory in the school and said students were moved from one school to the other to access science laboratories for science practical during the West African School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) examination and said it affected the performance of the students because they could not undergo periodic science practical lessons before major examinations were conducted.

He noted that because of the unavailability of transportation in the school, it could not undertake many official duties and participate in extracurricular activities in the district.

Mr Nkumfo said the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) had secured land for future development of the school and called on philanthropists, Old Students Association, and Non-Governmental Organisations to assist the school to grow.

He noted that in the midst of these challenges, the school was performing well academically and in extracurricular activities including cultural performance in which it represented the region at the national cultural festival in Sunyani, in the Brong Ahafo Region and emerged the best for the integrated science in the 2015 WASSCE examination in the Upper East Region.

He said due to the deprived nature of the school, government under the Secondary Education Improvement Project (SEIP)assisted some of the students with money to buy learning materials such as books and other needs to aid them in their studies for the three years they spent in school.