By Nicholas Bass
The Banjulinding Senior Secondary School has graduated over three hundred students who are expecting to transit to different universities, colleges, and tertiary institutions at its 6th graduation ceremony held at the school ground over the weekend.
The school started as an Upper Basic Cycle in 1995 and was later upgraded to a Senior Secondary School in October 2013.
In his remarks, the principal of the school, Mr Saikou Samusa said the school presented 360 candidates for the 2021 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in September where the school recorded a general performance of 89% with excellent performance in Physical Education, Commerce and History and with 51% pass in Mathematics and 59% pass in the English Language. “My school has registered more than 30 students in the University of The Gambia who are currently learning in the different fields,” he added.
According to him, the school’s instructional learning hours are always interrupted by domestic work and other unforeseen circumstances, he said his staff has embarked on sensitizing parents through Parents Teachers’ Association (PTA) to encourage their children to attend extra classes in order to complete teaching the syllabus in all the classes in the school.
The guest speaker, Commissioner Awa Jammeh, from the Gambia Drug Law Enforcement Agency and Gender for Human Rights urged graduates to focus on their future careers to take it as a personal commitment and work hard for success.
However, she advised the female students to avoid getting married at an early age without a decent job, and that they should upgrade themselves before marriage. She discouraged the male graduates to avoid going through illegal migration saying “you should always remember that, you should be a better person,” she exclaimed.
Furthermore, the graduation was marked with certificate presentations and gifts to deserving graduates and teachers including Isatou Baldeh of the Science field who received an award as the most outstanding English Language student, Hassan Sowe of the Commerce field received triple awards as the most outstanding Accounting, Economics, and Commerce student, Ebrima Baldeh of the Arts field also received triple awards as the most outstanding Mathematics, General Science, and History student, and Basiru Sey of the Science field received an award as the most outstanding Further Mathematics student.
Special awards were also given to Fatou Bah as the best WASSCE student of 2021, Mr. Edward Mutapha a Physical Education teacher was also given an award as the best subject teacher of 2021, and Mr. Ngange Sonko Bah an English Language teacher was also given an award as the best teacher of 2021 to 2022 academic year.