Sacred Heart School holds Speech Day

Nsoatre (B/A) Oct. 24, GNA - Professor James Ephraim, Vice-Chancellor of the Catholic University at Fiapre near Sunyani, at the weekend said the achievement of academic excellence without corresponding proof of morality in practical terms would not augur well for human enhancement and national development.

He was addressing the Ninth Speech and Prize-Giving Day of the Sacred Heart Senior High School at Nsoatre in the Sunyani West District of the Brong Ahafo Region.

It was under the theme: 93Morality and Academic Excellence, the key to Human Enhancement and National Development: the Role of Stakeholders".

Prof. Ephraim explained that morality was a code of ideal conduct of one's behaviour 93for a good reason," while academic excellence depicted an ability for one to go the extra mile and use or share that ability with others for good reasons.

Human enhancement, he stated, was a way that one's academic excellence would help, for instance, the society to put appropriate value or make individuals contribute to the better transformation of the environment.

Prof. Ephraim urged stakeholders to imbue morality and excellence in the youth as a role they could play to ensure that academic excellence and morality achieved the desired impact on human enhancement and national development.

He called for the collaboration of parents, churches, teachers, traditional authorities, donor agencies among others to ensure that the search for the proper key to human enhancement and national development succeeds.

Professor Ephraim stressed the need for students in educational institutions to be trained in their own individual abilities to develop their qualities and make them fit better into society.

Reverend Sister Benedicta Uzokwe, Headmistress, said the school, established in 1977 through the joint initiative of Bishop Kwadwo Owusu, the late Bishop of Sunyani Catholic Diocese and the chiefs and people of Nsoatre was absorbed into the main stream as co-educational institute in 1984.

It could now boast of a population of 790 students, 40 teaching staff and 25 non-teaching staff.

Rev. Uzokwe said the school, of late, had not been found wanting in terms of academic achievements and appealed to the government to provide more amenities to encourage students to learn harder.

She said the school lacked a spacious library block to ensure effective teaching and learning adding that the old one constructed for the then 600 population with assistance from Mr Kwadwo Agyei Darko, former Sunyani West Member of Parliament, had become too small to accommodate the students .

She said the construction of a girls' dormitory block which started five years ago was yet to be completed adding that a Mitsubishi bus donated by VALCO in 1992 had outlived its usefulness and appealed to the Government and non-governmental organisations to assist in its replacement.

Mr Kwadwo Nyamekye Marfo, Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister, said 67 new school projects estimated at 20.2 million Ghana cedis were to be constructed to accommodate new students in the region by next year.

He advised the students to eschew social vices and concentrate on their education.

Most Rev. Bishop Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi, Catholic Bishop of Sunyani, recalled that the establishment of the school by the late Bishop Kwadwo Owusu and the chiefs and people of Nsoatre was meant to inculcate in the youth the sense of discipline and morality among other things in line with the vision of Pope Benedict.