The St. Augustine Senior High Technical School in Charikpong in the Nadowli-Kaleo District has launched its 10th anniversary to celebrate its successes chalked so far since its conversion into a Senior High Technical School some 10 years ago.
The school was establishment in in 2006 as a vocational institution to offer the people in the Charikpong and other communities in the district basic vocational institution skills.
The initiative was by Reverend Father Bonaventure Kambotuu, a catholic priest and native of the Charikpong community, and funded by his Catholic friends who were resident in Germany and Austria.
Stakeholders including Directors of Education, traditional leaders, Heads of other schools in the area and leaders of religious institutions among others attended the ceremony to launch the anniversary.
The celebration was on the Theme “Enhancing Academic Excellence through Hard work and Discipline”.
Speaking at the ceremony, the Headmaster of the school, Mr. Francis Xavier Kambotuu, lauded philanthropic oranisations, individuals and the government for their support to raise the school in Charikpong community to its current status.
He said though the performance of the school was improving over the years, efforts had been put in place to further improve on it.
Rev. Kambotuu said the school is faced with several challenges including the lack of staff accommodation, pick-up vehicle, non-teaching staff among others which needs urgent attention.
“The school was awarded two projects; the institutional water system and water closet biogas toilet facility in 2018 but none is completed.
“The facilities will be useful to the school and we are pleading to get them completed for us”, he said.
The Upper West Regional Minister, Dr. Hafiz Bin Salih on his part, assured the authorities of school that he will ensure that some school infrastructure projects start in the school before October 2022.
He, therefore, urged the students to be discipline and determined, and to take their studies very seriously in order to improve on the performance of the school.
The Upper West Regional Director of Education, Mr. Razak Abdul Korah, also take the opportunity to appeal to teachers to consider students future and go back to schools for teaching and learning while the leaders of the unions are negotiating with government.
“I want to appeal that the money, yes we want it, things may be hard but the future of the children is also very important, so to what extend can we balance this that the children will not be disadvantaged even when we had gotten the money”, he explained.