My humbling Okuapemman experience

Last week, I visited the Okuapemman Senior High School (OKUASS) at Akropong.

My friend Nana Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng, who insists that his alma mater is better than mine (a fight that is still ongoing), had suggested my name to the school management when they were looking for a resource person to speak to the students on ‘Attaining SDG4:

The role of Free Senior High School’, as part of the school’s SRC Week.

I looked forward to a lovely experience up on the Akuapem Ridge.

The SDGs

After a brilliant drama sketch by the school drama troupe that spoke to the benefits of education, I explained to the students what the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) are.

Basically, in September 2015, at the UN Sustainable Development Summit, member states, including Ghana, formally adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in New York, USA.

The agenda contains 17 goals, including a new global education goal, SDG4, which is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’.

It has seven targets and three means of implementation.”

Significantly, the first target of SDG4 is to ‘ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and Goal-4 effective learning outcomes.

”Other targets include access to quality early childhood development, equal access for boys and girls, achieving literacy and numeracy for all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, and acquisition of skills for sustainable development, among others.

I drew the linkage between SDG4’s first target of free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education to the government’s Free SHS programme, which includes measures aimed both at improving access and quality secondary education in Ghana to which we had committed in 2015 in New York.

It was also important to exhort the students to learn hard in order to add value to their lives and to remind them that ‘schooling is not learning.'

 Revealing experience

While I enjoyed the experience of speaking to the students, I was particularly impressed when the Headmaster, Mr Obuobi-Atiemo Akuffo revealed to me in a conversation that for many years, OKUASS has integrated blind students into campus life and that especially in their first year, their sighted friends help them around campus.

While some have limited vision, others have a complete impairment.

I had never heard this and I am sure many in this country are unaware of it.
He told me they join the other students in every campus activity, including housework and they are not given preferential treatment in any way.

They are punished accordingly when they break school rules like everybody else.

Indeed, the current senior prefect is blind and I was informed that the first Ghanaian female lawyer with total vision impairment, Ms Evelyn Appiah, is a past student of the school.

The Assistant Headmistress, Madam Vida Ankaasiwai Azenab, informed me that the blind Ghanaian PhD student at the Oxford University in the UK, who recently made global headlines after he was manhandled and dragged out of the university union’s debating chamber, Ebenezer Azamati, is a past student of the school.

I was simply blown away.

Campus tour

Madam Azenab took me on a tour of the campus, which included the resource centre for visually impaired students.
Basically, it is a place where the students hang out in their spare time, and where they take their prep too.

She told me many of the students face ostracisation in their families and in a lot of cases they travel on their own to school from far-flung places as there are no learning facilities and environments closer to them.

Her main concern for the centre was the lack of proper chairs for the students to sit on for prep, as they had to make do with ordinary benches which gave them bad backs after hours of sitting.

She complained further of the school’s bad internal roads, which created problems particularly for the blind students as they risked injuring themselves when moving about.

 Admiration

I have absolute admiration for the Okuapemman Senior High School for the wonderful work they do integrating these students into mainstream education.

I understand blind students are integrated into mainstream education at the Mawuli School in Ho and the Ghana National College in Cape Coast too.

I wish that in every region, there was at least one senior high school that provided an inclusive education in this manner, and I hope we get there one day.

Notwithstanding my admiration, my fight with Nana Gyan-Apenteng over our respective former schools continues unabated.