Junior high school
In 2018, we secured funding to build a junior high school next to our existing primary school. This was a huge step for the project, giving us the ability to continue supporting our students with a high-quality, nurturing education.
Sponsoring JHS kids
In 2015, our first cohort of students at the SEP Happy school graduated. But we knew we couldn’t just stop supporting them. They had worked so hard to complete primary school and wanted to keep going with their education. The costs of attending junior high school (JHS) – uniforms, resources, PTA fees, lunches – were just too high for their families to afford. Not to mention the loss of earnings that the families would incur by the children continuing their education. So we set up a ‘Sponsor a child’ programme to sponsor our graduates into the government-run JHS in Saltpond.
Five cohorts of students have now gone to the local JHS and many of them have really excelled there. However, Mike (project coordinator) and Emmanuel (headteacher) have felt strongly for a long time that SEP should have its own JHS. There are many reasons for this:
We work closely with the Ghanaian Education Service (GES) who have always insisted that we build a JHS, since most primary schools in Ghana go from KG right up to JHS.
The current system creates a lot of extra work for our team in Ghana - Emmanuel has continued teaching extra lessons for all of our graduates on Saturdays, and Mike meets all of them every morning to give them their lunch money. Additionally, there are contracts for fees and resources that need to be negotiated with schools each September. Having our own JHS on-site would reduce this additional workload.
We’ve been saddened about reports from our graduates of the use of corporal punishment and uninspiring teaching in the government JHS, which has led to relatively high rates of students dropping out.
Building a new school
Our team in Ghana and in the UK were convinced that by having our own JHS, we could ensure the same innovative and inspiring teaching methods that we have embedded in our primary school. We would also be able to maintain the caring, pastoral environment that our students have become accustomed to at the SEP Happy primary school.
It is a founding principle of SEP that the beneficiaries we serve are able to break the cycle of poverty through education. In order to do so, students must reach the end of JHS so that they can take the BECE, the nationally recognised examination and certificate of education.
In 2018, we managed to secure funding to buy a plot of land next to our current school and to build the JHS. Mike worked hard for several months to find the right contractor and get all of the plans drawn up. In late 2019, we started work on a new building needed to accommodate our own JHS school in late 2019, and work is ongoing. We’ve had a few setbacks along the way, including a global pandemic, but we’re hoping to open the new school in September 2021. In the meantime, once the building is completed, the primary school will use the extra classrooms and space to allow for social distancing.