TAMPE-KUKUO Roman Catholic Primary school and Kindergarten

The Primary School was established in October 1962 in Tampe-Kukuo village. A few years later it was moved to Malshegu, a place more central for the children coming from eight surrounding villages. However, the school kept its former name: Tampe Kukuo.

The school is situated at 15 km from the Regional Capital Tamale, in the Northern Region of Ghana. It is in the rural area, accessible by a newly tarred road.
The school buildings consist in an old block of six classrooms in need of major repairs (walls and floors), a three classroom block “pavilion” (walls half height), a new block (1995) composed of an office, a store and two classrooms.

A kindergarten is part of the Tampe-Kukuo Primary School run by the MSOLA, with 168 pupils from 4 to 7 years old, in three classes of KG1 and three of KG2 .
They are occupying the six rooms of an unfinished teacher’s bungalow (project sponsored by an NGO and stopped four years ago). In the Kindergarten, there are nine women teaching, four of them are trained.

In the last years we observed a significant increase in the number of Pupils (+50 both in 2007/08 and in 2008/09). At present the Primary School has 584 pupils, from Basic 1 to Basic 6, two streams for each level. Pupils are from 6 to 23 years old. Many children have started school late; the average age in the various classes is high.

Tampe-Kukuo is a public school under the Ghana Education Service belonging to the Catholic Education Unit. We, Missionary Sister of Our lady of Africa have taken over the administration of the school in September 2007. On the staff are now 19 teachers (12 men, seven women among whom four sisters; 12 of the teachers are trained), three teaching assistants and two volunteers.

As concerns religion, 70% of the school population are believers of Islam, 30% are Catholics.

Two committees of parents are working hand in hand with the teaching staff. We have regular executive meetings and twice a term a general meeting. They are generally well attended comparing to former years, by 25% to 30% of the parents only, though. They bring their collaboration through an annual levy that allows the payment of utilities bill, watchman, volunteers and work of maintenance or improvement in the school. Common labour has thus been organised to replace the floors of three classrooms.

In the past six years, in the whole Northern Region and especially Tamale district, the performances of children was very poor and even getting worse. It has been a big concern for all stakeholders in education. The level of Tampe-Kukuo Roman Catholic School is rather low; many children have difficulties with the English language, in speaking and reading. But already last year a neat improvement was seen, almost all the Primary 6 received admission in Junior High School. We have hope to continue in this line, thanks to the greater number of teachers, the raising of awareness in the parents and the material conditions of learning that get better as time goes on. At the beginning of March 2009 the building of a new classroom block sponsored by a partnership with Germany has started.

Sr Justine Akampamya