E/R : Uncompleted Mission House Turned Classroom As Students Struggle With Accommodation

An uncompleted Mission House of Presbyterian Church has been converted into a temporal classroom for the students at Tinkong Presbyterian Basic School in the Akuapem North Municipality of the Eastern Region due to the lack of classroom block for Junior High School students. The school is also faced with inadequate

furniture forcing students to use plastic chairs. Tinkong Presby school was established in 1974 but operated at United Primary school building where both Presby and Methodist schools ran shift for their students in same building due to inadequate classrooms. Later the Presbyterian Church, PTA and an insurance company

constructed Primary 1 to Primary six (6) classroom block but without a Junior high school block. Therefore, after Primary six, students continued their education in a different School in the community. The situation also forced management of the school to also begin a JHS school which was approved by the Ghana Education

Service in the 2021. Due to lack of classrooms to accommodate the JHS students, an uncompleted mission house building of the Presby church has been converted into classrooms with inadequate furniture. Some parents had withdrawn their children due to the condition. The Headteacher of Tinkong Presby Basic

School Dorothy Aboagye Okyere also said the school managed to mobilize little funds to start a classroom block project for the JHS but the project has stalled at footing stage due to financial challenges. She said the school currently uses plastic chairs due to inadequate desks. The headteacher appealed to individuals and

philanthropist to support the school to complete the class room block. When I was posted here in 2021, I realized that the school did not have jhs and so the primary school were feeding the JHS in town so decided to start the jhs project here but we have challenges pertaining to the classrooms so with the

help of the church they were able to get us a temporal accommodation for form one’s and we wrote proposals to the assembly, NGO’s and other departments as well but unfortunately we couldn’t get any help so when we started most of the children told their parents that there are no classrooms to accommodate them so they will

move to the existing JHS in town. The Resident Minister of Tinkong Presby school Rev. King George Nukpeza said the JHS school has reached formed two but with total population of 36 students the lack of classroom block is affecting academic activities. Meanwhile Christian Fetor -Tsormana Ministries (CFT) has donated

about 150 school uniforms , exercise books,pens and pencils to some needy students in the school. Rev. Christian Fetor Tsormana Founder of CFT said, the donation comes as a result of a research his ministry conducted about students absenteeism in the school which indicated that most students absent themselves

from school due to lack of school uniforms, which discouraged most students from attending to school over the past years. He said the motivation behind the donation is that we think ministering is not only about preaching in church but making impact in the lives of the people around us and therefore we think that this is one of the ways we can make that impact to the benefit of the society we live.