Ghana:16 inmates at Nsawam Prison qualify for university

News of prisoners making good grades might come to many as a surprise, but that’s the story at the Nsawam Prisons where officials who put up a makeshift school managed to send 16 inmates to the university. An even greater number of them qualified but were unable to make it because they're still serving their term.

Joy news -Etornam Sey reports that eleven inmates sat for the 2010 WASSCE examinations and all of them qualified for the university, in 2011 ten inmates sat for the examinations and eight of them qualified for the university, and in 2012 eighteen inmates wrote the WASSCE and sixteen passed. The success rate for the BECE is even higher.

However, ASP Courage Atsem, Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Prisons Service, says because the prison authorities do not have the mandate to release any inmate based on their brilliant performance at the BECE, the Prison Administration has also introduced Senior High School education so that inmates who do well at the BECE can continue to the senior high level.

16 candidates out of 150 who passed the tutelage at the senior high level at the Nsawam Prisons are currently admitted into various government universities across the country. There are currently 134 qualified inmates waiting to enter the university.

Deputy Director of the Nsawam Male Prisons, Superintendent Ackom Gyedu Kwame is optimistic that with the adequate resources, the Prisons can churn out more university products. According to him, it is important to ensure that inmates, who are predominantly made up of the youth, come out as better persons after serving out their years—and education offers them that opportunity.

Source: Joy Online