California Star School Complex at Omanjor, a suburb of Accra has hit ten years with a call on government to provide Capitation grants to private schools operating within deprived communities to help bring quality education to the door steps of the masses living in such communities.
Outlining the achievements of the school in the last ten years, during the anniversary celebration at the weekend Mr. Edward Manu, the proprietor of the school noted that the school started in 2002 with 18 pupils comprising 11girls and seven boys. However, he said California Star School can now boast of 450 students.
Coincidentally, he said that the 18 pioneer students performed wonderfully with excellent grades at BECE in 2008 during the school’s first attempt in the exams.
”The School has since not looked back and year after year our students pass with distention,” Mr Manu told the audience.
According to the Proprietor, this year 2012, a total of 57 students were presented for BECE and they have all gained admissions into Senior High Schools.
He noted that currently, most of the students from the School are furthering their school in the first class Senior High Schools in the country.
He noted that the school’s achievement was not restricted to only academic; the school has also performed tremendously in the area of sports and other competitions such as cultural festival, which was indication that education in California Star School was not one side but total. He revealed that the School picked the second position prize in 2011, Independent anniversary march pass at Ammasaman among a host of schools.
Proprietor Manu noted that educational success can never be achieved on the silver platter and as a result parents must partner the school to bring the best out of their wards. “I do not know any one who has got to the top without hard work, no success comes easily, high level of discipline is inculcated in the students and this always yields positive results, hence the theme for the celebration-TEN YEARS OF DISCIPLINE AND ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE ,” he pointed out.
Mr. Manu stated that despite the success and the strives made over the years there was the need for parents to support the school acquire a new bus and a befitting school library He announced that the school was doing everything possible to complete the school’s ICT lab to help raise the standard of Information Technology among the students.
He revealed that the school has offered 15 orphans and needy students free education and therefore appealed to churches, benevolent society, opinion leaders in community and NGOs to come to the aid of the poor and needy students with scholarship for them to also enjoy education.
He said that every child in the Cre’che and nursery doesn’t pay school fees while there was also free transportation for the students
On her part the guest speaker Doctor Lawrencia Serwaah Manu, of Tamale Government Hospital who spoke under the theme for the anniversary TEN YEARS OF DISCIPLINE AND ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE, noted that discipline was a pre-requisite for success.
“In every institution discipline and academic excellence cannot be over looked, conscious of this schools must take a major decision to decisively inculcate discipline in the children,” Guest speaker Dr.Serwaah Manu declared.
“Discipline again gives the students a vision of the great potentials which lie beyond education, no success can be achieved without discipline, another serious measure which leads to improvement in life and academic performance is discipline,” she added.
According to the Guest speaker discipline was a pillar in sound education and to ensure of achieving and maintaining higher standards no school authority should toy with discipline. She observed that discipline bring the best potentials out of the children and must be maintain if the school want to sustain its achievements.
Dr. Serwaah Manu stated that discipline should not be expected from only the students, rather teachers must demonstrate it at appreciable level for academic excellence to be achieved
In order to achieve academic Excellence, Dr. Serwaah Manu appealed to proprietors to demonstrate boldness in taken proper decision without favor or bias provided it would help push the school on the right pedestal.
Ms Doris Darimani, Ga West Municipal Director of Education In-charge of private Schools commanded the management of the school for abiding by the rules of GES over the years.
Mr. Moses Anim NPP Parliamentary Aspirant for Truobo Constituency who graced the ceremony noted that education was a very important component for human development because it only assert when bequeathed to your child no armed robber or any body can never take it from him /her in life.
He therefore appeal to Ghanaians to vote for NPP which has promised free SHS to help alleviate and lessen the burden of Ghanaians particularly the single parents who have to struggle but in vain to send their wards to school.
“NPP believed that the natural resources that the LORD has bestowed upon this country can be used to improve upon our human resources through education hence the Free SHS education and this is not above Ghana we can do it,” he insisted.
Anim appealed to Ghanaians to rate the nation above their parochial interest and comport themselves before, during and after the impending general elections to allow peace to prevail.
PROPHET ABOH RETURNS OTABIL’s FIRE
…Says His Free Education Bash Is Lame On Biblical Legs
Story By Dominic Jale (The Sun)
Prophet Meshech Aboh Founder and General Overseer of International Pure Fire Chapel (IPFC) in Accra’s suburban Ablekuma Olebu has appealed to the very venerable Pastor Mensa Otabil of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) to retract his purported claim that there is nothing as Free Education and instead apologise to all Ghanaians who feel let-down by the statement.
Prophet Aboh who was shocked about the content on the tape irrespective of when the statement was first made, opined that since the scriptures and the promises of God have no room for impossibility he thought Ghanaians must trust in the Lord rather than Pastor Otabil.
Speaking with power and precision in reaction to the statement by the ICGC leader, Prophet Aboh, told THE GHANAIAN SUN in an exclusive interview at the weekend that it was absolutely wrong for a leader of a church to condemn free education, irrespective of times and seasons. According to him, after listening carefully to the utterances of Pastor Otabil, it was obvious that the ICGC leader spoke purely as a private business man who did not take into account the word of God and its promises in the end-time.
“I was shocked when I heard the pronouncement on the airwaves that free Education was impossible. In fact when I heard the speech I did not believe that it was one of our Church leaders, let alone a respected man of God such as Pastor Otabil. In fact the speech sounded more from one of those light-hearted politicians who possess little or no faith and cautioned that as a church leader the larger picture ought to be the focus”, he complained.
The security of this nation is in joepardy if we don’t arrest and address the drop out rates in our educational sector. “Nobody should think that he is a middle class in our society and as a result he or she careless about what is happengs around, becuase these drop outs who have no future would sooner or latter see the society as the cuase of their failure and these people can easily be tools for trouble shooting in our society,” he explained.
He continued that majority of Ghanaians are struggling to earn a living and because the social strata does not allow all fingers to be equal, he shudders to think just how a man of God can hang on to a faithless statement such as is in the public domain at the present time”, Prophet Aboh stated.
Prophet Aboh who owns one the best private Schools in town at Ga-Central Municipal Assembly added that any government that would implement Free SHS would help lessen the plight of the under-privileged if not erase it altogether.
He noted that he did not agree with Pastor Otabil that there was nothing free on this earth or that every free thing lacked quality because, some things one may spend huge monies to acquire may turn out to be low in quality. Again, Prophet Aboh disagreed with Pastor Otabil’s claim that if government provides Free Education to children they would look down on their parents in future because, they failed to fund their ward’s school fees.
He was of the view that since independence, people have been paying taxes yet we still pay for electricity bills, school fees and almost everything so if a government comes to office and decides it was going to absolve all utility bills, there was nothing wrong with it.
“Even though I pay tax on my school, because of the often-pathetic situation some children find themselves in, I have awarded a number of scholarships to the needy bracket in my school because the enormity of the poverty is a bit too serious for comfort when most of today’s leaders hinged on scholarships to enable them attend school”, Prophet Aboh stated.
He noted that a time is coming when another government would take over all the private schools and even make University education free in fulfillment of the Word of God. “As pastors we must not look at only Accra congregants, rather, we must look far and see how some of our members in the rural areas struggle to raise their children through no fault of theirs. “With this, any government that decides to use part of the resources the all-knowing God has bestowed on humanity must welcome the idea and see it as a fulfillment of the scriptures, Prophet Aboh observed.
He noted that nothing happens on this earth for nothing and it is therefore incumbent on Bible researchers to compare the development of the world to the scriptures, and know that the signs of the times do not allow their personal expectations to sandwich the prophecies of God especially in these last days.
According to Prophet Aboh, very few people gave the past government the dog’s chance when the National Health Insurance was being introduced but today, it is a reality Ghanaians are enjoying.
“What we must bear in mind is that the Prophecies of God would all come to pass, and what we are seeing around the world is not happening by any streak of accident”, he concluded.
Big Fight Over NDC Gift Cars
…Foot Soldiers Battle Chiefs, Religious Leaders Over Chinese Fleet
By Kofi Safo-Antwi The Sun()
Reports across the length and breadth of the country especially where the ruling NDC’s hold is fast-fading into the opposition’s sunrise, hint of open eruption of sharp discrepancies between chiefs, opinion and religious leaders on the one side, and the neglected on the other over the disbursement of a fleet of cars and motorbikes, with general elections just around the corner.
The fleet has a line-up of four-wheel drives of several makes, already sprayed taxis inching closer to Toyota-Corolla style with funny Chinese names, and motorbikes that were cleared through the Tema harbour under the thumb of a man known by his alias as SITCHO, virtually a campaign machine for the ruling Party wherever he moves.
The windfall comes on the heels of a clandestine distribution of yet another fleet of cars to editors and their deputies, (popularly referred to as ATTA CAMBOO) whose newspapers have been sympathetic to the NDC Party cause all this while. Additional information says, every month cash rewards of unquantifiable figures go to help those editors roll the papers off the machines.
But for his troubles in gaining the slot as the lead-clearing agent, SITCHO has warmed himself into a brand new TUNDRA of western make, virtually dumping his old-fashioned diesel-consuming square-light Mercedes Benz, whose exhaust fumed more than the inner chimneys of Satan’s hell whenever funerals came calling from his native Volta region.
According to eye witnesses under whose gaze the fleet were cleared from the merchant ships, they could not put their fingers on the exact numbers yet were under no illusion that going by a guess, the fleet and the motorbikes combined could not be lower than 1,200 in number.
According to them the figure is even on the conservative side because consistently for some three weeks, virtually all other cars aboard ships meant for disembarking have been stilled or frozen on the excuse that, pretty urgent clearances needed to be met on time before the contract slipped through the agent’s fingers.
But what was supposed to be a plus to the political fortunes of the NDC is rather taking an entirely new and opposite turn, following situational reports from some constituencies and regions where new districts and capitals have been created by the local government Ministry.
Before the cars and motorbikes were thrown into the fray, subjects and settlers respected royal and traditional authority, but at the newly-crafted Tatale district up-north there has been open confrontation over who best fits four-wheel-drive cars more than the lad on motorbikes, especially when some NDC foot soldiers claim they have toiled consistently all these years without any rewards.
At Tatale where an NPP sympathizer was dispatched to go elsewhere at Tamale and drive into the Palace one such gift car (a Hilux 4 by 4) for the Naakpale Wobore, (the Paramount chief of the Tatale Traditional Area Gariba Yenkosor), there was complete confusion sometime last week on the part of several NDC supporters who taunted Party executives at the NDC Secretariat, asking them to join the chief themselves in campaigning to attract the electorate.
In other vicinities where Chinese-made cars were dispatched to for onward supply rather than the four-wheel-drives, the scenario reminded one of the early 1960s when Kwame Nkrumah’s CPP imported loads of kerosene fridges from the Soviet Union, threw them virtually on the lap of certain lowly elements, when the more luxurious ones powered by electricity from the western world landed in classy and affluent homes.
The cumulative effect is that bouts of anger linger on in several hearts over the sudden realization from NDC headquarters in Accra that, in the sharing of booty a paramount chief or so-called religious leader is a preferred entity much more than the foot soldier, who, in the last campaign, roamed from house-to-house and the street corners (just like Jehovah’s Witnesses) under sweaty conditions turning propaganda into truths.
THE GHANAIAN SUN has learned that in the coming days when growing misgivings come to a head and push comes to shove, car sharing which ought to be a positive could ultimately peter off into negativity in that, every NDC person in such communities may strive for car even if of Chinese make, rather than motorbike.
And unless more and more cars arrive early in time before December 7, Ghana waits to see just how the obviously dissatisfied and angered foot soldiers who figure their largesse has been offered the retinue of chiefs and opinion leaders would be catered for, in like circumstances.
