Reverend John Ntim Fordjour dining with the students

A Deputy Minister of Education, Reverend John Ntim Fordjour, has dined with students of the St. John’s Grammar Senior High School in Accra.

Patricia Quarshie, a form one student and a table head, served Rev. Fordjour jollof rice and fish as hundreds of students sat at the dining hall for lunch.

The Minister visited the School unannounced to check on enrolment after attending a ceremony at the Amasaman Senior High Technical School (AMASTEC) earlier in the day and decided to spend time with the students at lunch.

The Isareli Embassy in Ghana on Tuesday, April 12, 2022 handed over a modern Information Communication Technology (ICT) classroom to AMASTEC as part of its “Education for Digital Innovation Project.”

While at St. John’s Grammar SHS, Rev. Fordjour inspected the progress of work on a newly-built girls dormitory intended to house the newly enrolled students.

As of the time of the visit, the project had been fully completed.

The Minister also inspected the quantity of food at the School’s stores and assessed measures being put in place by the management to guarantee the comfort of the new entrants.

After expressing satisfaction with the quantity of food items in stock, the Minister proceeded to eat with the students.

“This is delicious,” he said and commended the School’s caterers.

As of Tuesday afternoon, April 12, 2022, the School enrolled a total of 1,158 new students.

Dr Edmund Fianu, Headmaster, St John’s Grammar SHS, told the Minister that the School was expecting many more students to report in the coming days.

He said the School had adequate food in stock to cater for all the students for the entire semester.

Dr Fianu said the School needed a minimum of 150 beds to accommodate students in the new girls’ dormitory.

Rev. Fordjour assured that the Government would provide the School with the needed logistics and resources, including beds for the new dormitory to enhance teaching and learning.

Rev. Fordjour said by the end of the ongoing SHS enrolment, some 2.2 million students would have benefited from the Government’s Free SHS and TVET Programme since its inception in 2017.

He said between 2017 and 2022, the Government had initiated not less than 1,132 infrastructure projects in second cycle institutions across the country.

“Out of this number, some 734 has since been completed and handed over. The rest are at various stages of completion and we are poised to ensure their timely completion,” he said.