Kwanyarko Senior High Technical @ 25. Still growing
Kwanyarko is a small quiet town in the Agona East District of the Central Region. It is not far from Agona Swedru, only about 10 kilometres apart.
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Swedru is bigger and more commercial, while Kwanyarko was well known in the past from far and near for its brass band which was engaged by many in cities and towns across the country to provide entertainment at very important functions.
I have been to Swedru several times in the past to watch football matches at the famous Swedru Sports Stadium involving Real Tamale United and All Blacks and Fankobaah, two popular football clubs that used to play in the top flight of Ghana soccer until recently.
I feel sad that these three traditional clubs – RTU, All Blacks and Fankobaah – have since ceased to be among the elite of Ghana football, having been relegated to lower divisions and are rarely heard of these days.
Just as RTU was the “Pride of the North” so were All Blacks and Fankobaah the Pride of Agonaman.
Apart from watching football matches at Swedru in the past, I also used to pass through this Agona town on my way to attend functions at Oda.
All this while, nothing had taken me to Kwanyarko even though I knew it was not far from Swedru.
However, I had the opportunity to visit Kwanyarko for the first time on March 19, 2016. It was the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Kwanyarko Senior High Technical School, popularly called KWASTECH in the area! It was also the eighth speech and prize- giving day of the school.
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I was at Kwastech that day to give support to Prof. William Asomaning, the Board Chairman of the school’s governing council and also Board Chairman of GOIL, and a son of the soil.
Prof. Asomaning is one of those, including Nana Dr Ampim Darko V, the Kwanyarkohene and Kyidomhene of Agona Nyarkrom Traditional Area (and his elders) and Madam Queenstar Maame Pokuah Sawyerr, the MP for Agona East Constituency and Deputy Central Regional Minister, who are leaving no stone unturned to turn Kwastech into a first-class school that will attract the best from the area instead of the children travelling outside for their high school education.
As I drove into the school that Saturday morning, I could see a school struggling to grow in the face of challenges. It can boast of some structures that houses boarders, classroom blocks, at least where learning and teaching can take place, and some others with a number of ongoing projects.
This is home to the present population of about 1,780 students, made up of 719 boys and 1,061 girls. The boarders number 756 while day students make up the majority of 1,024.
In most student’s activities, the girls appear to dominate, outnumbering the boys. This fact was brought home to the guests at the speech day when the acting Central Regional Director of Education, Mr B K Ofori, jokingly asked whether the school was a girls’ school or what.
As told by the Headmistress of the school, Mrs Florence Prah, the establishment of Kwanyarko Senior High Technical School was the “brain child” of the chiefs and people of the traditional area, and especially the citizens of Kwanyarko, who are mainly peasant farmers but believe in the value of education.
This dream became a reality when the PNDC government, as part of the 1987 educational reforms and through the initiative of the chiefs and people of Kwanyarko, gave the green light for the school to take off in 1991.
Kwastech started in the Catholic Basic School classroom block, formerly called Catholic Middle School. For whatever reason, the pioneer students nicknamed it the CASTLE. The pioneer students were 20, made up of 12 boys and eight girls with Mr J K Kanfra as the first headmaster.
The population of the school shot up to 200 within a short period. However, by the 1995 / 96 academic year, the population had reduced to a mere 15. This was a period in the history of the school that came to be referred to as “a period of uncertainty”.
When everybody thought the school would collapse, hope was rather restored at the beginning of the 1996/97 academic year when Mr Kwaku Yeboah was posted to the school as the headmaster. Suddenly the student population rose to 400 .
By the 2011/12 academic year and with its motto “Truth, Perseverance and Excellence” there was a big leap in the population of the school to over 1,300 students, under the leadership of Mr F A Koomson, as the headmaster. It is projected that by the year 2020, the student population would cross the 2,000 mark.
Headmistress report
In her report, the headmistress, Mrs Prah, also mentioned that over the past 10 years, the school had undergone a number of transformations from a day school to a boarding school. There has been an increase in the number of programmes offered in the school from three to six, namely General Arts, Home Economics, Business, General Science, Agricultural Science and Visual Arts.
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“Within the short period of 25 years, the school has had a consistent and progressive commendable academic record and has turned out many prominent people in all spheres of the economy – Academia, Health, Education, Business, security, etc,” she added.
In the recent past, a number of students from Kwastech with good grades gained admission to tertiary institutions such as the University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), University of Cape Coast, University of Education, Winneba and the polytechnics.
With the assistance and support from the government, district assembly, the traditional council, the Board of Governors, PTA, management and staff of the school, modest improvement has been achieved in the area of infrastructural development such as classroom blocks, ICT centre, dormitory, and a 1,000 capacity dining hall (still under construction).
However, according to Mrs Prah, the school still needed more of such infrastructure to improve on its delivery of education to the people of Agona and the nation as a whole.
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Goil MDs speech
The double ceremony of 25th anniversary and eight speech and prize- giving day was held on the theme: “Discipline A Prerequisite To Academic Excellence In the 21st Century” and had Mr Patrick A. K. Akorli, the Managing Director of Goil, as guest speaker.
He told the gathering that discipline and academic excellence were bedfellows.
“You can only achieve academic excellence when you subject yourself to discipline. In this regard you have to obey the school authority and listen to whatever advice is given you by your teachers.
“Once there is peace then discipline can germinate. With discipline the sky will be the limit for both the students and the school as a whole. It is only when there is discipline that you can pursue your academic programmes in peace and go on to attain the highest level of excellence,” Mr Akorli expatiated.
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He charged the students to be serious with their books so that they could go on to pass their exams and become useful to themselves, their parents and the country at large.
Maame Yaa Pokuaa was commended by the guest speaker for using her position to lobby for many projects for the school.
May Kwastech grow to become one of the best schools in the country.
Floreat Kwastech!