Initial Problems

Holy Cross Era

New Era

Message from the Headmaster

Campus Tour

INITIAL PROBLEMS

Students and staff accommodation was and still is a critical problem in the school. The initial discomfort of sharing classrooms with Primary School kids was solved when the school moved to its present location at Bakaekyir at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term where makeshift arrangements were made for classes to start. The present Administration block when completed was a multi-purpose building used as classrooms, science laboratory, staff common room, store, the headmaster’s office, library and also a changing room for Rev. Joseph Amihere Essuah (later Bishop Essuah) who joined the staff.

Another serious problem was that of adequate staffing - only three masters were teaching all subjects on the time-table. Ripples of discontent and boycott of classes led to the Van-Hout Report which recommended an improvement in the staffing position of the school. In January, 1954 a team of tutors headed by Rev. Father Essuah joined the staff. Others were Messrs. J. H. Johnson, Robert Mensah, Robert Bruce, Robert Reeks, Kwamina Amissah, Rev. Father Theodora de-Roy and J. A. K. Otoo.

In addition to these tutors a few tutors were also engaged on a part-time basis: Mrs. Andrey Earle, Mr. and Mrs. Rhulka.

The quality of teaching improved considerably, but out of the 47 students who started the school, only 11 were presented for the School Certificate Examination in 1955. St. John’s, unlike its contemporary Fijai, was the only private Catholic Secondary School at that time. It, however, became an Assisted Secondary School before 1955 and so its first batch of students wrote their School Certificate Examinations as school and not as private candidates. One of those candidates, the late Prof. P.A.V. Ansah, who became head of the journalism Department at the University of Legon, came out as the best ‘O’ Level candidate in the country and this won him an Elder Dempster Lines trip to London for 6 weeks in 1956.

Even though St. John’s was a day school, students were expected to attend morning Mass everyday at 6:00 am before coming to school. Weeding, digging and fetching of water from Sekondi or Essikado were normal forms of punishment for truancy, breaching of school regulations or stealing Papa Akakpo’s coconuts.