UE/R: Discipline is the cornerstone of every success, victory and lasting achievement – Haruna Iddrisu

  By: Raymond Batasia Wegwi

The Navrongo Senior High School, popularly known as NAVASCO, in the Kasena Nankana Municipal in the Upper East Region, has celebrated its 7th NABIA co-sponsored speech and prize-given day at the school with the theme “Discipline: a pre-requisite for transformational education and leadership” and the Headmistress, Ms Mercy Babachuweh, reported that, currently the school is having 127 teaching and 56 non-teaching staff with an enrolment number of 1,122 students, made of only second and third years with 800 vacancies declared, for the incoming first years. According to her, since 2019-2023, the performance of the students in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination, WASSCE has been very good, ranging from 84 % to 91%,  and this year they presented 586 and hope the will improve on the 91% of last year.

On the school’s achievements, she said the school is winning a lot of awards in sporting and academic disciplines and majority of the students are doing well in their field of studies especially engineering, medicine at the tertiary level and the old students, NABIA is also very helpful and it is the 1983 year group that co-sponsored this year’s celebration and government has also completed the girls’ dormitory and their digitalization project is progressing steadily

However apart from all these achievements, the school is bedevilled with so many challenges some of which are ; no fence wall, inadequate and dilapidated staff bungalows and furniture, poor staffing, especially non-teaching staff and called for a support. Ms Mercy Babachuweh took the opportunity to expressed her gratitude to the former and current Upper East Regional Ministers, the NABIA, organizations and individuals who are supporting the school to improve teaching and learning to enhance academic performance.

The guest speaker, and MP for Tamale South, Haruna Iddrisu who is a NABIA, underscored that, discipline is the cornerstone of every success, victory and every lasting achievement which is a sense of responsibility that drives people to give their best not just for themselves, but for each other, their children and the country and urged the students to be disciplined in whatever they are doing and respect the school’s rules and regulations to come out successfully and become transformational leaders and contribute meaningfully to the Ghana and the global world.

Mr. Alabira Ibrahim, the NABIA global president, who listed the number of the old students, NABIA, who are supporting the school greatly in undertaking numerous projects, both in Ghana and diaspora, was very grateful for their support and appealed to them to help build a fence wall for the school, complete the digitization of the school records project, improvement of the Internet connectivity and the NABIA mentorship programme. He concluded by asking the NABIA to reflect on the legacy they are building and to commit to being active and engaged members of the association

The Upper East Regional Minister, Alhajj Dr Hafiz Bin Salih, who is a NABIA himself, paid a glowing tribute to the founding fathers of the great NAVASCO for their foresight and reiterated that, discipline is the Hallmark upon which every great achievement is built and therefore urged the students, the staff and management to be disciplined to achieve success. He said as a, government , the recognize the fact that education remains the pivot around which every facet of development involves, and it is against that backdrop that president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo rolled out the free SHS policy to ensure that, no child is left behind without secondary education and over the years they have increased access, school enrolment, and also championed infrastructural development of the second cycle institutions to, creating enabling environment for effective teaching and learning, for enhance academic performance and also distributed tablets to all senior high school students across the country to advance ICT learning. He took the opportunity to called the religious and traditional authorities to bring their authority to bear in the moral upbringing of students and supporting management to effectively govern the school and entreated all Ghanaian to ensure that there’s peace before, during and after 7th December, 2024 general elections.