The British Columbia College (BCC) at Madina and Adjiringanor near Accra, has held is 7th graduation and achievers’ awards ceremony at the Madina campus with a passionate call on the students to first seek the educational kingdom and all other things shall be added. The BCC which was established in August, 2016 is a co-educational K-12 school. The College therefore runs pre, primary, middle, higher and talent schools for both Ghanaian children as well as foreign students. The school is accredited by the National Schools’Inspectorate Authority (NaSIA), running the Ontario Provincial Curriculum through the Rosedale Academy, Ontario, Canada and affiliated to Ridley College, Ontario, Canada. The BCC is also accredited by Cambridge Assessment International Education, England and a member of the British Council Partner Schools Global Network (PSGN) for the Cambridge International Geographical Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), A-Level and other qualifications under the pedagogical leadership of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Principal, Dr. Benedict Nii Tetteh Yartey. The College, which closed the last academic year with a total of 548 students, has increased its enrolment by 35.8 percent, hitting a student population of 744 with more than twenty (20) staff for the current 2022/23 academicyear. This year’s Graduation and Achievers’ Awards ceremony was under the theme, The Role of the Youth in Nation Building’. It saw the graduation and celebration of three (3) students who obtained the Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD), three (3) other graduands who had successfully completed their Diploma programme in the International Geographical Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) of Cambridge and more importantly celebrating eleven (11) children who had completed their Kindergarten (KG) course and subsequently transitioned into the primary years’ programme. In his address to the well-attended gathering of stakeholders of the school including parents and the invited dignitaries, the CEO and Principal of the BCC, Dr. Benedict Nii Tetteh Yartey noted that the story of BCC was such an intriguing one, from humble beginnings at the Adjiringanor campus to the Madina location, saying the College could pride itself with a lot of products that were competing on the global market. According to him, students or learners did not only need the right skills and exposures but also the right support for them to realize their potentials. ‘That is what we are determined to do here’, Dr. Yartey added. The CEO announced that five (5) teachers of the College had been certified as Canadian teachers for the General and Advanced level courses. According to him, the year under review also saw an investment in about seven (7) other teachers who had also been trained and fully certified for the Cambridge and other programmes, having successfully completed these programmes. The Principal gave the assurance that the College would continue to pursue the full path of the professional development of their teachers. This, he said would enable the teachers to be up to date on the emerging trends in the educational space. Dr. Yartey pointed out that today’s teachers could not use the analogue or traditional method of teaching to handle today’s contemporary children, emphasizing that the story had changed. ‘We believe that if we want to equip these children with the right skills to deal with the unchanging circumstances that we have here, then they must be given these skills and training. We are in the 21st century and you want to use 20th century skills to teach the children. It will not work. It is just like putting square pegs in round holes’, Dr. Benedict Yartey intimated. The Member of Parliament (MP) for the Madina constituency, Hon. Francis-Xavier Sosu who was the Guest of Honour at the event, stressed the need for the students and learners to as he put it, first seek the educational kingdom, explaining that the other things would automatically be added. According to him, he had been one of the leading beneficiaries of education because in the absence of education in his life, he would not have reached this far. ‘I saw education changed my life from being a common street child to becoming a lawyer, and also becoming a legislator’, Hon Sosu intimated, adding that it was education that made the difference for him. The Madina MP noted that what one needed beyond God was education. In his view, without education, children would not only he hopeless but also unable to unlock the potentials of their future. In his added view, society would remain in darkness and the creativity of the next generation cannot be developed without education. Hon. Sosu attributed what he described as the current society’s darkness and under-development to lack of education. ‘The reason why we are so corrupt as a countryis because people are not enlightened that when you squander state resources, you are destroying your own future. So anyway that you see it, people are not enlightened’, the Madina MP argued. Mr. Sosu, who is also a Human Rights Lawyer, was of the view that education went beyond the formal training in the classroom and urged parents and guardians to equally be fully interested in the co-curricular activities or creativity development of their wards such as in music and dance, poetry recitals and spelling bee competitions, explaining that these activities greatly contributed to building the holistic life of the child. ‘As a little child, I recall that one of the things that accelerated my transformation and also gave me an opportunity to participate in some of the creative arts, was these co-curricular activities’, the MP pointed out.

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Emmanuel Darko

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