St John’s School Sekondi – Takoradi
St. John’s School is a boys’ second-cycle Roman Catholic school located at Sekondi in the Western Region of Ghana. It is one of the best senior high schools in Ghana and the best in the region.
It was founded on 29 January 1952 by Archbishop William Thomas Porter of the Society of African Missions.[2] At the time of the founding, Porter was then vicar apostolic and later Archbishop of Cape Coast.
At its founding, the school had three teachers and forty-seven students.
Background
The origin of St. John’s School can be traced to an English Churchman who came to the Gold Coast in 1933 from Nigeria where he had been the General Manager of Catholic Schools. He discovered to his dismay in the Gold Coast that the Catholic Church which had been a fountain of education for centuries elsewhere had not catered for Second Cycle Institutions in the country. He therefore, worked tirelessly to found St. Augustine’s College in Cape Coast in 1936. This man of vision and courage was the late Archbishop W. T. Porter of Cape Coast.
The Second World War fizzled out all arrangements for overseas financial aid and staffing for other schools and colleges. However, the Government’s Accelerated Education policy of 1951 to cater for the educational needs of Middle School Form 4 leavers after their Primary School Education spurred on the Church to establish a number of Catholic Secondary Schools in the country in 1952. Bishop Herman in Kpando, Volta Region, Opoku Ware in Kumasi, Ashanti and St. John’s in Sekondi-Takoradi, Western Region, were all established by the Church to meet the needs of the numerous Middle School leavers whose future looked quite bleak.
The Government took on the church’s challenge and also established the following schools: Keta Secondary School in the Volta Region, Dormaa Secondary School in the then Ashanti Region and our sister school, Fijai Secondary School, Sekondi-Takoradi in the Western Region.[3]