Mr Andrews Wak Kakra, Bawku West District Director of the National Service Scheme, has advised students to make good use of Service Personnel posted to their schools by engaging them to help them in their studies.
The District Director gave this advice at Kusanaba where the Bawku West District Chapter of the National Service Secretariat [NSS} organised a quiz competition between the Kusanaba Senior High School and the Zebilla Senior High/Technical School at the weekend.
The competition formed part of activities to mark this year's National Service Week in the district.
He said personnel of the Scheme were to complement the efforts of full-time staff of the Ghana Education Service (GES).
National Service Personnel, he said, "are fresh from tertiary institutions and well-motivated through the NSS and the National Volunteer Programme (NVP) and are capable of identifying needs of disadvantaged communities and can help them towards achieving holistic development that will benefit individuals and the nation as a whole."
He said the falling standard of education in the region called for a serious concern of all stakeholders including students as they prepared for both their internal and external examinations.
Mr Kakra told the students that they had to work very hard as they would be competing for job opportunities with their counterparts in other parts of the country and abroad.
He also asked them to learn from their past mistakes, exhibit discipline, translate the knowledge and skills acquired and use appropriate, peaceful channels to seek redress to their grievances on campus.
He stated that the NSS would continue to post personnel to the second-cycle institutions in the district to ensure that the students received optimal tutorial to bring out the best in them.
The Zebilla Senior High/Technical School scored 69 points in the quiz contest to beat its host, the Kusanaba Senior High School, which secured 64 points.
Prizes were awarded to both schools with further promises from the District Directorate of the NSS that more of such academic exercises would be organised from time to time to promote research and intellectual competition to enhance academic standards in the district.
Thirty-two students of the Kusanaba Senior High School and 30 members of Service Personnel in the district also took part in a blood screening and donation exercise, which formed part of the National Service Week.
The Headmaster of the Kusanaba Senior High School, Mr Atubiga Clement Stephen, was particularly delighted about the sterling performance of both schools in the quiz.
Although he was of the conviction that the students of both schools would go places with hard work, discipline and focus, Mr Atubiga expressed fear that too much of entertainment and complacency could rob them of the future leadership that society expected of them.
He, therefore, urged them to avail to academic exercises such as quiz, debates and intellectual discourses to avoid distractions that might drift them away from their future.
The headmaster was full of praise for Mr Kakra for spearheading the programme organised by the NSP in the district and implored him to sustain the exercise.
Mr Musah Abang-Gos, a teacher of the Nurul-Islam Junior High School in Bolga, emphasized the need for students to read more and wide to broaden their scope.