St. James’ NSMQ Semi-finalists Adjudged Overall Best WASSCE Candidates in West Africa

Two former students of St. James Seminary and Senior High, have been adjudged the overall best candidates for the sub-region in the 2022 West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE).

Masters Alex Opoku Manu and Benjamin Eyram Nana Kwame Degbey are scheduled to pick up the 1st and 2nd prizes respectively, at the West African Examinations Council’s (WAEC) upcoming 71st Meeting and International Excellence Awards slated for Tuesday, March 14, 2023 in Banjul, The Gambia.

In a letter addressed to the Rector of the school, the Council expressed its heartiest congratulations to the lads and the school for the enviable achievement.

The two award winners led the school to its semi-final berth in the 2022 National Science and Maths Quiz (NSMQ) only to lose to the eventual winners of the competition, PRESEC, Legon. Presently, Alex Opoku Manu is enrolled at the KNUST School of Medicine while Eyram Degbey is studying Electrical Engineering on a $40,000 scholarship at the Academic City College in Accra.

St James’ Seminary was established in 1978 by the late Bishop of the Sunyani Catholic Diocese, Most Reverend James Kwadwo Owusu.

The school which initially trained only seminarians smashed records in WAEC’s O’ Level Examinations but was relatively unknown until it opened up in the early 90s and was absolved by the government of Ghana to accept non-seminarians.

St. James Seminary has over the years risen to become the best senior high school in Ghana and West Africa, dominating the WASSCE than any other school in the last two decades and consistently placing first on the ranking table compiled by the Ghana Education Service (GES).

Over the same period, the school has won several WASSCE distinction awards and international excellence awards. St. James has never looked back since 2004 when it produced the second best candidate for the Ghana exam and won its first WASSCE distinction award. The subsequent years would see the school wining many more awards in the national and subject categories. Most notably, in 2016, Master Pius Kyere was declared the overall best candidate in West Africa. Only last year, the school won four of the six WAEC Distinction awards, having produced the 2nd and 3rd overall best candidates as well as the best candidates in the Business and General Arts programmes in the 2021 Ghana WASSCE.

The International Excellence Awards are presented to the three overall best candidates from the WASSCE’s five member countries, The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.