ADDRESS BY MR. REUBEN TETTEH SACKEY, HEADMASTER, PREMPEH COLLEGE, AT THE 38TH SPEECH & PRIZE-GIVING DAY OF THE SCHOOL, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH 1987.

Mr. Chairman, Otumfuo our Great Guest of Honour, Nananom, Distinguished Guests, colleagues of staff, students, ladies and gentlemen. On the school's 38th speech and prize-giving day, I am happy to give account of my stewardship. I am happy to remark that the staff and prefects must be praised for maintaining a high standard in the neat appearance of the school, the smart turn out of our students and their orderly behaviour.

During the 1986-87 academic year the teaching staff numbered 58. This included 37 graduates, 13 diplomats and 8 specialist teachers. As has been the case we have had to strengthen our 6th form science department with 3 lectures from the University of Science and Technology on part time basis. The slowness of Ghanaian graduates and other qualified personnel in joining the staff of schools and the reluctance of those who already find themselves in the teaching profession to remain in it for long periods, should be a matter of concern to all who wish to see steady progress of education in this country. Almost all the best science students leaving the 6th form for the university opt for medicine or engineering. The best Arts students gravitate to the law faculty or school of administration. The total number in physics graduates produced by the University of Ghana for the past 5 years is less than 30. No doubt several students do not perform well at A-levels.

Our teachers need motivation. Remedial and vacation classes cannot solve the problem. Our students' population last academic year staggered between 1065 and 1061. The policy of Prempeh College has been that the facilities that exist here must be made available to the largest possible number of students with the least possible inconvienience. But we are now facing population explosion. Our large numbers continue to cram our existing facilities to capacity. It is against this background, our Director-General, that I make the following request.

It's a matter of regret that Prempeh College has never been provided with a Geography room. An ordinary classroom meant for 35 pupils has been used for a Geography room until 1971 when it was turned into a classroom. We need a Geography room badly. We can even offer geology here to produce students for U.S.T-Tarkwa School of Mines thereby helping to train the most needed middle level manpower for the mining industry. Mr. Director General, a time has come when we must help to produce readily employable students. We definately need a morden business education department with facilities because it appears many talents are being wasted in the desert air.

For over thirty years the Arts and Crafts Department of the school has been housed in one of the old army wooden structures inherited by the school. Sir the location makes supervision difficult. The time has come for an art and craft block to be built within the classroom area of the school. Sir my humble suggestion is that a five story classroom/business/art and craft block complex be built for Prempeh College to enable her expand into a six-steam school capable of admitting 300 J.S.S pupils a year. Its only then that the Geography department, the Business Education department and the Art and Craft department will be able to train their pupils to realise their potential to the full. Mr. Chairman I should now wish to touch upon a few specific areas of school life and progress and highlight of a few of our crucial problems. The Senior Prefect in his report has explained our successes, failures problems and hopes in the field of sports, clubs and societies. I wish to express our profound gratitude to the government and the Ghana Education Service for listening to our exhaustive appeals.

Renovations of our building has been going on in earnest, and here I wish to place on record the high standard of workmanship and masonry exhibited by Gyening Construction Ltd and All Good Electrical Works Ltd. Indeed most of us lost hope when A-lang Ltd declined the offer to renovate the school. Its our fervent prayers that enough funds are released to enable them renovate the masters bungalows. Our teachers need to be motivated. Our bungalows are dirty, they have not tasted paint for 8 years, some are without furniture, the floor tiles have ripped off. Facilities like fridge and gas cookers are things which masters need badly in their bungalows. Our own Director General, guised as well-endowed school, Prempeh College had really suffered. For it is sad to note that that in 1970s when bungalows, flats and low cost houses were built for key schools in the country. Prempeh College had nothing. As it is now, we have only 36 bungalows to serve 52 masters. Its not uncommon to find our plea for rented quarters in town being ignored, apparantly because we cannot pay the high rents other organizations are prepared to pay. How then can our masters get the peace of mind and comfort to give of their best? Our dear parents and guardians come to our aid please. Mr. Director we need block of flats!

Distinguished Guests, ladies and gentlemen our parents and guardians and Amanfoo in their various capacities continue to sustain us, but I am sorry to say that sometimes some parents tend to blame Headmasters for nothing. What are the facts? The current boarding fee of 45 cedis per student per day which was fixed 2 years ago is too low to enable heads to provide 3 square meals for growing children in secondary schools. Memoranda from Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) submitted to the Ministry of Education recommending an increase in the boarding fee from 45 to 90 cedis per person per diem have not been heeded to. Mr. Director General we humbly request that a serious and urgent attention be given to our plea. It cannot again be said that parents are prepared to pay because they like the boarding system. In order not to be accused of criminal negligence Head of schools have choose between the bad and the less bad. They give long mid-terms or call parents to help. Here in Prempeh College I am happy to say that our parents are very reasonable and helpful. Look at the beautiful round cheeks of our students, indeed the pressure on heads of institutions due to the delay in the payment of boarding subsidy and other grants in addition to the inadequate boarding fee and other problems in our school is too heavy a cross to bear. The general expenditure grant is another problem. At the moment the amount of grants received by the average school covering travelling and transport, general expenses, maintenance, repairs and renewals is less than 100, 000 cedis a quarter. This cannot even sustain our only truck and T&T.

Our A-levels experienced some rude shocks this year. The results are as foloews: We represented 84 candidates. 40 passed in all subjects, 25 passed in 2, 17 passed in 1 and 13 had subsidiary passes. There were only 4 distinctions. We are quickly mending our academic fences and we promise to stage a come back.

The skies were blue for the O-level's. 42 of the 165 candidates presented had grade 1 including 6 distinctions, 58 had grade 2, 40 had grade 3 and 25 had GCE passes. There was no failure. It will interest you to know that this year Caesar Nana Ofori Ampem hit W.A.E.C National Award standard and therefore becomes the third Prempeh College student to hit National Award in 3 years! His results are as follows: English 1, Oral English 1, French 1, Mathmatics 1,Additional Mathematics 1, Biology 1, Chemistry 1, Physics 2. Please give us enough accommodation as the Cape Coast schools are enjoying and we shall do wonders.

THE JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL/SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL CONCEPT.

Director General some concerned citizens feel that our brave quest to change the educational system by introducing the junior secondary school system is tragically flawed. They feel the Ghana Education Service has blindly pressed on to meet unrealistic schedules and succumbed to public-relations pressures that override common sense. They question the rush, the impatience and the lack of infrastructural facilities in both towns and villages, but the critics and carefullists must not forget that man is never satisfied. Even the British state school system that they refer to has its blind spots. Let me have the temerity to bore you with a few.

Some British parents look back nostalgically on the old system and conclude that under the old selective system a bright student from a poor home could be shown how academic achievement gave him a chance of breaking away from his old environment and getting on in the world. In the present system they argue that the same bright student is going to need enormous strength of character to ignore the influence of his mainly non-academic school mates and work hard. One serious concern is discipline, exacerbated by teachers strikes, lack of textbooks, abandonment of tougher subjects like Greek, Latin, German and separate subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Biology. But Britain continues to produce geniuses and thousands of children are getting excellent and imaginative education.

In Ghana care has been taken to palliate the fears of parents so that there will be Science Colleges and Senior Sixth form Science Schools in the cities to make use of the university facilities and lectures. Like the U.S.A parents will have more say in checking child abuse as well as teacher-abuse. The boarding system will die a natural death and headmasters will have more time to administer schools the way they should and not waste time performing magic to feed students on inadequate funds. There will be longer terms, more challenges and competitions among schools. How are we in Prempeh College preparing to receive the JSS pupils in 3 yrs time? Our present form one students will be in form 4 by 1990. Their counterparts in the JSS will then be in SSS 1.

The JSS pupils will gain a years advantage. We in Prempeh are taking over our classrooms /examination hall from the Kumasi City Council who are now building permanent classrooms for their Prempeh Primary School. Apart from enabling us to make use of our 5 stream facility it will create more room for a larger JSS intake.

It is necessary to get enough classrooms because we shall not mix the 2 sets, the traditional and the SSS since the former will have had a longer period of gestation. We must not forget our leadership role in education, nor must we surrender our pioneering heritage. Ghana under Kwame Nkruamah was the first to establish fee free education in Africa. Busia's rural development program spread to African countries like wildfire. Why then, must we wave? Times change and we must change with the times. Abraham Lincoln once said "its easier to move a cemetery than to change a syllabus or educational system." We must therefore embrace the JSS concept. According to UNESCO experts in Ghana where Kwame Nkrumah implemented a vigorous radical educational policy, over 20 years of compulsory primary education has resulted in enrolment for 70 percent of the children of school age. This indeed is a high figure compared with many other African countries but the impact on illiteracy has only been a reduction from 7 percent in 1960 to about 70 percent in 1986, clearly then the JSS will atone for the deficiency in the traditional system. It is in education that the government assumes the responsibility for the future of the society. The challenges now is to lay long term foundations in the crises of the present. The challenge is to turn todays mirage into the oasis of tommorrow. Who will educate the educators? The experience of developed countries will.

Let us do away with a boarding system designed to shelter a small number of students in a condition which be described as cushioned seclusion the transition from one concept to another necessarily involve certain inconveniences and even anomalies. The future expansion of secondary school must be on much more frugal lines based on our obligations to the community, rather than of the comminuties obligations to us.

Distinguished Guests, ladies and gentlemen, Ghana today is on the threshold of innovative and challenging transformation in the structure and content of our education. All these changes are aimed at progress, we must remember that its not those who speak most often of progress who are necessarily doing most to achieve it. Real progress depends on the efforts of considerable numbers of often obscure men and women working honestly and well at their particular tasks. When for example, a teacher gives in clear language a carefully prepared lesson or acting as in loco parentis thinks more of the future of the child or a parent learns to say no, or sometimes a civil servant presents a well thought and straightforward report free from flattery or distortion, or the pressman gives the pros and cons of national issues or Ghanaians realizing that no government can sustain boarding schools take over the catering aspects of the boarding system or a director or manager despite temptation to act other wise, adheres to the principles of promotion on merit only, these are in conspicuous but vital moments which in their multitude produce real progress.

Ladies and gentlemen we tend to locate our blame in the distortions of society simply because our yesterdays imprison us. We are slowly but steadily becoming cynics. You see the cynic having observed that some men often act dishonestly concludes that all men must always do so and therefore proceeds to act himself in accordance with his fallacious conclusions. This attitude to life is not rewarding either to the community or in any lasting sense to the individual. I would either urge you all not to allow the young minds of our young children to become depressed and distorted into cramped attitude of the cynic. Positive thinking is the answer. Mr. Chairman, Otumfuo, our Guest of Honour, Distingushed Guests, colleagues of staff, ladies and gentlemen, may I take this opportunity to thank the British Council for their wonderful donation. The timing is impeccable because our 22 year old duplicating machine breaks down with monotones regularity, we shall foresee it for to prize something when you have it is joy and thankgsgiving. Ladies and gentlemen in our invitation letters we made mention of silver collections. Your finding time to come gives us the assurance that our prayers have been heard. Those who have nothing to give today need not worry donations are welcome throughout the year.

I wish to record my appreciation to Otumfuo for his support and special interest in this school. He is dear to our hearts. Finally I wish to record my appreciation for the valuable contribution made by all those who serve the school in their several capacities, the Chairman and members of the Board of Governors, the teaching and administrative staff, the kitchen staff, labourers and all those who look after other vital areas of this school. Thank you very much.

REUBEN TETTEH SACKEY,

HEADMASTER

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