Headmaster of Hordzoga MA basic school fears disenrollment due to lack of teaching and learning amenities

The headmaster of Hordzoga MA Basic School in the Ho Municipality has bemoaned the poor state of the school and expressed fears of a collapse if appropriate are not taken to salvage the dire situation.

Hordzoga MA Basic School is one of the oldest basic schools in the eighteen (18) Hordzo communities established in the year 1963 before additional six others in other communities.

The Hordzoga MA Basic School currently has about one hundred and fifty-one (151) students with a total of fifteen (15) teachers.

The Hordzoga MA Basic School operates from the nursery through to Junior High School with good standing in all academic and non-academic activities of the Ghana Education Service.

Meanwhile, the school is faced with infrastructure challenges and a lack of some classroom materials resulting in the gradual collapse of the school.

The headmaster, Eric Fafa Tsahey lamented the poor nature of the school saying it poses danger and infringes on the rights and safety of the school children and their teachers.

"We are one of the basic schools in the municipality but things have not been all that well with the school. When it comes to infrastructure and other materials that aid in learning in the school.

"If you look at the school building, it's not in good shape. I can say for a fact that this is a death trap and also when we enter into the classroom, what our pupils; the learners will sit on to study are not there. When we are talking about desks and you compare or take the ratio of pupils to a desk, you can see that five kids are using a mono desk," the headmaster narrated.

Describing the school's situation as appalling, the headmaster disclosed that the worst part of it is that "Teachers that are supposed to impact or give the necessary knowledge that the students need are not having even a single chair or table in any of the classrooms at Hordzoga school."

He further lamented the drastic drop in enrolments by the school which can also be alluded to the collapse of the school feeding programme from the school which he explained "the cook has stopped over-indebtedness by the authorities since 2019."

During a visit to the school, it was discovered that the classroom block formerly used by the JHS is in a deplorable state with tattered roofs with major portions entirely roofed off, leaving the remaining parts including the doors and windows weak and wrecked.

This has forced the school to relocate the JHS students to occupy the primary classes while the primary school occupies an uncompleted classroom block under construction for the Kindergarten.

In the company of some teachers, the headmaster and the community chief, we noticed that JHS One (1), a class of 38 students were managing just ten (10) mono desks, in JHS 2 which has twenty-one (21) students, are managing six (6) mono desks while JHS 3 class of nine (9) students are managing five (5) mono desks meanwhile all these classes has no Teachers Desk or Chair available.

The headmaster revealed that all efforts to address the situation through the necessary authorities have proved futile.

"We have tried our possible best, we fell on the PTA, we fell on the stakeholders that if the need be when it comes to education, they can speak to but nothing is happening," the headmaster revealed.

He, therefore, called on the Ghana Education Service (GES), the regional minister, the Member of Parliament and the Municipal Chief Executive to come to their aid.