By Laudia Sawer
Tema, Nov. 12, GNA — Master Anthony Elikem Essah, a form three pupil of Prime Academy at Afienya Mataheko, won the maiden Global Spelling Bee Championship competition held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Master Essah also won category three of the competition, participated by pupils in grades eight and nine.
The competition, which had national finalists from Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Bangladesh, also saw Nana Ekua G. Morgue, a grade-five pupil of the Leap School, and Master Jeffrey Oppong, a form-two pupil of the Future Warriors Education Complex, all in the Ashanti region, emerge as winners for categories one and two, respectively.
As part of their awards, they received trophies, tablets, medals, certificates, and an opportunity to partake in an academic summer camp in the United Kingdom.
Mrs Christabel Botchey, the Chief Executive Officer of Edupro Concepts Organisation, a member of the organising entities for the competition, told the Ghana News Agency that the five-day event had participants grouped into three categories: grades four and five, grades six and seven, and grades eight and nine.
Mrs Botchey noted that the Global Spelling Bee Championship was a platform for learning and gathering pleasant memories, adding that its objective was to boost the confidence level of contestants, enrich their word power and vocabulary to improve their communication skills, and elevate them to an international spelling stage.
She added that it also helped improve the contestants’ social skills and provided them with an opportunity to interact and mingle with people from various parts of the world while giving them the maximum positive exposure possible.
She explained that the contest was in two folds: the written test and the oral contest, which was the focus of the competition, adding that the contest scores were a sum of the written test score and that of the oral score, which was scored over 100 per cent.
She congratulated the winners and urged other pupils and schools to sign up for the contest, while thanking stakeholders including the Ghana Education Service, parents, heads of schools, teachers, and some churches for supporting the initiative.
The Global Spelling Bee Championship 2024 was organised by Enosi CV LLC, in collaboration with the British University in Dubai, Edupro Concepts Organisation and other allied Spelling Bee partners in Africa, the UAE, and Bangladesh.
GNA