Three Senior High/Technical Schools in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region together presented a total of 696 candidates for this year’s West Africa Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination [WASSCE].

The number comprised 229 candidates presented by the Gowrie Senior High/Technical School, 155 by Zorkor Senior High and 312 filed by the Bongo Senior High School.

With three public senior high schools and three community senior high/technical schools, the Bongo District has only two designated WASSCE centres. They include one at Bongo Senior High School and the other cited at Gowrie Senior High/Technical School.

This came to light when the Bongo District Chief Executive [DCE], Hon. Ayamdor Alexis Adugdaa in the company of the District Director of the Ghana Education Service [GES], Mr. Emmanuel S. Zumakpeh visited a WASSCE centre at the Gowrie Senior High/Technical School to observe the conduct the exams.

The Bongo District GES Director, Mr. Zumakpeh explained that the other three community Senior High Schools could not present any candidates because they were yet to enroll students into the final year class.

Headmistress of Gowrie Senior High/Technical School, Madam Margaret Akparibo who conducted the DCE and his team round the exam centre and other facilities of the school, disclosed that her school presented a total of 229 candidates for this year’s WASSCE. The number comprised 124 boys and 105 girls. She added that last year, Gowrie Senior High filed a total of 310 candidates for the same exam.

Touching on challenges the school faced, she pointed out that the school’s kitchen and an unoccupied staff bungalow have developed serious cracks that need immediate fixing. Madam Akparibo also disclosed that the school urgently requires spacious boys and girls dormitories, a modern kitchen facility among other pressing needs.

The District GES Director, Mr. Zumakpeh after listening to the concerns of the headmistress, advised her and the school’s management team to prioritise and complete a project each year but warned against overburdening parents with levies for development purposes.

The Bongo DCE, Hon. Ayamdor Alexis Adugdaa expressed satisfaction with arrangements guiding the exams and wished all the candidates good luck. He noted that the school is in need of some critical infrastructure and pledged he would remember it in resource allocation to the educational sector. He however expressed worry about the unavailability of land for the school’s future expansion due to private household structures that have enclosed the school’s current land area.

Hon. Adugdaa also directed the headmistress of Gowrie Senior High/Technical School to fix some plumbing defects that allowed dirty water and other residue liquids from the school’s laboratory to flow openly on the campus.

The DCE and his team later made whistle stops at Gowrie and Kunkua Junior High Schools to monitor academic work including punctuality on the part of teachers.