HISTORY OF THE GREAT YENDI SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Yendi Secondary School (YESS) is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of service to community and country. A great milestone! 

Over the past 50 years, YESS has produced great personalities who have served Mother Ghana diligently in line with the school’s motto “We learn to Serve”.

The school was opened in 1970 under the able and visionary leadership of Mr C.B.A. Teviu.  However, the story of the school began in the 1922 when a Trade School was opened in Yendi by the British Colonial Administration to serve as a skills training institution for the then Northern Territories (NT). 

Following the decisive battle at Adibo (near Yendi) on 4th December 1896, when the Dagomba army was vanquished by small German force, Northern Ghana became part the European colonial empire. When the partition of Dagbon between the British and German colonisers was terminated in 1914, Yendi became part of the British colony and ready to be considered for a school. At that time, the only schools in the NT were the White Fathers’ Catholic school in Navrongo, which opened in 1907, the Tamale school (opened in 1909),  the Gambaga school (opened in 1912). Plans to open new schools in the NT were constrained by World War I. The immediate post-war years saw a Trade school opened in Yendi in 1922, alongside basic schools in Salaga and Wa.  

The Yendi Trade school, which became the nucleus of the YESS, was at the heart of new government’s  thinking about educational policy and outcomes in the NT.  Education was to be oriented towards vocational /practical skills. Governor Guggisberg’s memorandum of 1925 promoted that idea that the Yendi Trade school was to become the centre of trades education in the entire NT region, where select pupils from the schools in Gambaga, Salaga, Wa, Lawra would undergo further training in crafts and agriculture. (Pupils from the Navrongo school, which was yet to re-open after being closed during World War I were to be part of this scheme). This radical idea to focus education in the Yendi school on practical rather than academic skills was partly abandoned after the departure of Governor Guggisberg in 1927. 

By 1930, while there was an increased interest on the part of parents to enrol their children in school,  educational expenditure was mounting in the NT and the Colonial Government wanted a way to curtail rising costs. After visiting schools in the NT, Gerald Power ( the Director of Education) recommended that the government schools should be handed over to Native Administrations rather than the missions. Native Administrations were encouraged to take ownership of their local schools and were expected to expand, maintain and run the schools according local customs/needs.  

The Yendi School:

In the spirit of this policy shift, the Ya-Na ordered the construction of  new buildings for the Yendi Native Administration school. The cost of construction was estimated at £1,000, a huge amount considering that the total tax revenue of the native authority was a little over £8,000.The project was completed in 1936 and the school opened in February 1937.  

Mr J.S. Kaleem was appointed headmaster of the Yendi Native Authority school. J.S. Kaleem  later became Chief of Nyankpala or Nyankpala-lana) and also first Principal Education Officer for the Northern Region. The Ya-Na appointed the Mion-lana (Chief of Mion) as overall supervisor of the school. The Kuga-na, Zohena, Balogona, and Kum-lana were appointed as supervisors of the four compounds, which were named after the four sections of Yendi- Kuga, Zohe, Balogu, and Kum-lana fong. 

After independence, some effort was made to convert the Yendi school into a secondary school. This effort intensified between 1959-1961, during the implementation of accelerated  expansion of secondary education under the Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana Education Trust Fund (GET FUND) schools agenda. Several schools were built under the GET Fund program. In Northern Ghana, schools built under the GET Fund were Navrongo Secondary, Ghanasco, Tamale, Lawra Secondary and Bawku Secondary. Yendi missed out because the government thought that it was beneficial to consolidate the status of Tamale as an education hub with a new secondary school.  

Following the Coup of 1966, native authorities, local elite and politicians in Yendi continued to push for a secondary school in Yendi. Prominent among them were Alhaji Majeed Hussein (former DC and Educationist),  S.I. Iddrisu (MP for Yendi in the first regime) and Alhaji Shani Mahama (MP, 1969-72 and 1979-82).  Eventually, approval was given for the school to open in 1970. 

Mr C.B.A. Teviu, (the first Headmaster), against many odds,  set up mechanisms and parameters for effective teaching and learning, as well as cultivated a school culture for hard work, ethical behaviour and success.  After 50 years, YESS has surely produced great citizens who have served in all domains of the Ghanaian society. 

Associate Professor Ahmed Bawa Kuyini 

RMIT University, 

Melbourne, Australia.

PROUD TO BE ROYAL (1980 Year Group)