Pupils in Ga East have been learning in a pavilion and in classes of up to 100, and officials say the new block is only a first step.
Pupils at Abokobi Presby M/A Basic School in the Ga East Municipality now have a two-storey, six-classroom block after the facility was commissioned on Tuesday.
The block also houses a staff common room and an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) laboratory, a computer room for teaching digital skills.
The Member of Parliament for Dome-Kwabenya, Mrs Elikplim Akurugu, commissioned the building with support from the Ga East Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Mr Edmund Agboh. The Ghanaian Times reported that the project was funded from the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF), the share of national revenue that is transferred to local assemblies for development work, and was built in five months.
Why the school needed it
Mr Agboh said the idea came after the Municipal Director of Education flagged the conditions under which Junior High School (JHS) pupils were studying
inside a pavilion near the Municipal Health Directorate. A follow-up visit by the Municipal Education Oversight Committee confirmed the problem, and the Assembly then raised the money for the building.
A representative of the Municipal Director of Education, Mr Seth Anyomi, put the wider problem in numbers. He said some classes in the municipality hold between 80 and 100 pupils, which he said does not allow for effective teaching and learning.
Mrs Akurugu said growing enrolment had stretched existing classrooms, leaving some pupils crowded together. She said the project followed a tour of schools in the constituency that she carried out after winning her seat last year to find out what each school needed.
The Abokobi SHS question
The MP also used the occasion to update residents on the Abokobi Senior High School project, which she said has been sitting incomplete for close to 12 years.
She said the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), the state fund financed largely by a share of VAT and used to build education infrastructure, is in the process of awarding the job to a contractor.
The scope has also been widened, she said, to add boys' and girls' dormitory blocks and bungalows for staff. She appealed to GETFund to put abandoned projects in the constituency at the front of the queue.
What else is coming
Mr Anyomi said other interventions should ease the pressure, including a completed six-unit classroom block at Musuku. He also credited the MCE with handing over a modern kindergarten facility to schools at Taifa and supplying 5,000 tables and chairs.
Mr Agboh asked teachers to follow the Ghana Education Service Code of Conduct and told pupils to stay disciplined.
Mrs Akurugu asked the school's leadership to maintain the new block so that later groups of pupils can still use it.
For Ghanaians abroad who support schools back home, the figures from Ga East are a useful marker: classrooms are being added, but class sizes in parts of the municipality remain far above what officials there consider workable.
