Gold Track students begin lessons in Upper East

The Gold Track students, the second batch of the first year students of second cycle institutions in the Upper East Region have reported to their various schools and academic work has begun smoothly.

Visits by the Ghana News Agency to some of the Senior High Schools in the Region on Monday showed that most of the students had reported to their respective schools at the weekend and teaching and learning had started steadily.

At the Bolgatanga Girls’ Senior High School (BOGISS), Mrs Rose Avonsige, the Headmistress, said the School was expecting about 562 students for the Gold Track and 450 students had already reported to school.

She said although the School needed at least, two additional teachers for the science department, some teachers who taught the Green Track students had volunteered to assist in the Gold Track.

The Headmistress however, appealed for more teachers’ accommodation as the School only had 22 quarters for about 90 teachers.

Another challenge, she said, was inadequate water supply, “the school has only one manual borehole and one mechanized borehole for 2190 students and when there is power outage the mechanized borehole does not work.”

Mr Stephen Awasnap, the Assistant Headmaster in charge of Administration at the Bolgatanga Senior High School (BIG BOSS), indicated that out of about 600 students expected for the Gold Track, more than 500 students had reported and were being taken through orientation.

He indicated that even though no new teacher had been posted to the School yet, it had enough teachers to propel academic work.

“The School lacks adequate teacher accommodation and furniture and has converted the uncompleted buildings into classrooms to use as shade for the students to sit for lessons.”

The Green Track students used the Assembly Hall chairs that do not have tables to sit for lessons throughout the 41 days.

At the Zuarungu Senior High School, the story was not different as most of the 632 students expected had reported to school.

The School is also challenged in the areas of teacher accommodation, furniture and teachers for the various subjects.

As a result of the implementation of the free education policy in the Senior High Schools, large numbers of students who successfully completed the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) gained admissions into public second cycle institutions.

This placed a huge burden on the limited infrastructure including classrooms, dormitories, furniture among others in the various schools and posed a threat to effective academic work.

As an interim measure to deal with the challenges, the government this year started the implementation of a shift system called double track system in most of the senior high schools where the 2018/2019 intake were put into the Green and Gold Tracks.

The Green Track, which is the first track spent 41 days on campus and vacated on November 7, while the Gold Track, the second track reported on November 10 and would also spend the same number of days in school.