SWESCO institutes five-year strategic development plan
Built some 57 years ago, as a mixed boarding/day non-denominational institution, the now Swedru Senior Secondary School (SWESCO) is located south of Agona Swedru, the capital of the Agona East District in the Central Region of Ghana.
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The school has over the years produced some of the finest brains in the country, and is the alma mater of several distinguished sons and daughters of Ghana who serve in the public and the private sectors.
To continue with its achievement and make it an institution of choice and academic excellence in the country, the school is developing a five-year strategic development plan expected to be implemented from 2017 to 2021.
A day’s workshop
At a day’s workshop of stakeholders to discuss the plan last Friday, the Headmistress of the school, Mrs Alberta Rigg Stewarts, said the school was prepared to be placed among the top schools of choice in the country with the implementation of the plan.
She indicated that since the school was built, little had been done to improve on its infrastructure. However, enrolment figures had continuously increased over the years, stretching facilities to their elastic limits.
Mrs Stewarts said the student population now stood at 2,490 with 2,200 of them in the boarding house.
Though she noted that the figure required close supervision of students, 71 of the 104 teachers stayed outside campus leaving the supervision of boarding students to 33 teachers.
The situation, she said, was due to the fact that there were not enough staff bungalows to accommodate teachers on campus.
Effective supervision
She said to achieve excellence in the holistic development of the students, there was the need for more teachers to be accommodated for effective supervision.
She also expressed concern about the poor road network and other infrastructure such as dormitories, toilet facilities, dining hall and classrooms.
A consultant and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the school, Mr Joe Appea, also an old student, said all stakeholders owed it a responsibility to contribute their quota to ensuring that the school became an institution of excellence and choice.
He said there was the need for an effective land use plan to ensure a proper and well-structured infrastructure development.
Stakeholders, board members, staff, old students, community members, and students, discussed issues of infrastructure development, the encroachment on the school’s lands and the need to protect them, incentives for staff, school management, discipline and academic excellence.
