The Accra Girls Senior High School has for the past 50 years made significant contributions to the production of the requisite human resource needs of the country. The school was built in 1960 as one of the Ghana Education Trust Schools by Ghana's first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah. The girls' school, which started with 12 students, has both day and boarding students. Today, Accra Girls, which ranks among the top girls' schools in the country, has a population of 1,100 students with about 50 teaching staff and 51 non-teaching staff. It has three dormitories which accommodate 720 students, while 20 of its teaching staff live on the campus. The programmes being offered in the school are: General Arts, Science, Business and Vocational Skills (Home Economics and Visual Arts). With the provision of five decades of quality education, the school has lined up a number of activities to mark its 50th anniversary which began with a launch in October last year. The year-long event includes a fun fair, games with sister schools, cleanup exercises at the Dzorwulu Special School and Maamobi Polyclinic, a float through the principal streets of Accra, home-coming for old girls, fun games for staff and old girls, a dinner dance and variety entertainment night, which will be climaxed with a speech day and a thanksgiving service in October this year. A visit to the school revealed that a number of projects were being undertaken to improve and expand facilities on the compound. They include a two-storey 12-unit classroom block and a new dormitory to accommodate about 400 students and raising of the wall around the school. These facilities, among other things, will cater for the first-year students that will be admitted into Form I in September this year. At the time Daily Graphic paid a visit to the school, workers were busy at the projects site. They are expected to finish work before the beginning of the 20lO-2011 academic year. Conducting this reporter round the project facilities, the Headmistress, Ms Veronica Akapame, said both students and staff residential accommodation had been inadequate, adding that some students had to commute from as far as Kasoa and around Dodowa to school every day. She said steps for the construction of a new dormitory and the renovation of a staff bungalow were being undertaken, and she wished more of those facilities were in place, On the issue of access to water, she said, the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Dr Mustapha Ahmed, had promised to solve the problem. Ms Akapame said the wall was being raised to ensure adequate security, adding that the wall was so short that people easily scaled 'it and .entered the campus. Security, she said, had improved greatly with the raising of the wall and the clearing of a grove that used to serve as hideout for intruders, among other things. On academic performance, Ms Akapame said, the school's performance had improved over the years with 100 per cent results. She said students who passed through the school qualified for tertiary institution with competitive grades, and that this could be seen in the kinds of professionals the school had churned out over the years. "Today, we have past students who are doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, entrepreneurs and other professionals who have contributed in diverse ways to the development of the country," she said. She said discipline had been another hallmark of the school, and that had also resulted in the positive results of the school. Ms Akapame commended the old students of the school, Parent-Teacher-Association (PTA) and other organisations for playing various roles to improve facilities on campus, thereby ensuring effective teaching and learning. She said the school would not rest on its current achievements but do more through the provision of quality education to its students. Source: Daily Graphic