By Godfred A. Polkuu
Bolgatanga, Sept. 30, GNA – The Teaching Islam (T.I) Ahmadiyya Junior High School (JHS) in the Bolgatanga Municipality has consistently topped all public schools in the Municipality in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) for the past four years.
The School recorded 91.4 and 97 per cent passes in 2018 and 2019 respectively in the BECE and in 2020, it had 100 per cent pass, which subsequently declined to 86.4 per cent in 2021, with the School still in the lead in the Municipality.
Mr Hamid Abdul-Wahab Adam, the Headmaster of the School, said despite the decline in 2021, “We were still the best public School in the entire Bolgatanga Municipality because we came out top among all the public schools even though we had 86.4 per cent.”
The Headmaster in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Bolgatanga, after the School’s Performance Appraisal Meeting (SPAM), said the management of the school would continue to work to improve its performance with the aim to top all Public Schools in the Region.
He said SPAM afforded teachers, parents, pupils, and other stakeholders in education the opportunity to discuss the academic performance of the school and strategize on how to further improve discipline and its performance in subsequent BECEs.
“We had the opportunity to analyse the results from grade one to grade six, we analysed the performance of female and male pupils, looked at the subject base analysis and arrived at the total percentage of 86.4 in the 2021 BECE results,” he said.
Mr Adam said as part of strategies to improve the academic performance of the School, management from 2015, organised free extra classes for pupils prior to the normal contact hours.
He expressed concern that some pupils did not patronise the extra classes and urged parents of BECE candidates to encourage their children to attend school early so that they could part take in the extra classes which started from 0700hours to 0800hours before normal academic activities.
Mr Adam said the School registered a total of 50 candidates comprising 33 females and 17 males for the 2022 BECE and was confident that with the calibre of dedicated and experienced professional teachers, it would improve on its performance and maintain the top position.
Mr Peter Asunsua, the School Improvement Support Officer, noted that the T. I Ahmadiyya JHS was the first School in the Bolgatanga Municipality to organise SPAM for the 2021 BECE results.
He commended the management and staff of the School for their dedication, which had over the years translated into the School’s performance, and urged them to continue to impact discipline and academic excellence in the pupils.
Mr Asunsua also admonished parents and guardians to take a keen interest in the education of their children, insisting that they must ensure activities including the use of smartphones which drifted the attention of pupils from their books, were not encouraged.
Some parents who spoke to the GNA after the meeting acknowledged the efforts of the management and staff of the School in their quest to achieve academic excellence, and pledged not to overburden their children with household chores so that they would have enough time to concentrate on their studies.
GNA