Mr. Robert Teiko Aryee, Founder of Ebenezer Secondary School, was born in Accra on 23rd April 1902. His father was Charles Aryee of ‘Frimpong We’, Asere division. His mother was Naomi Ablah Quarcoo of Akanmadjaye, James Town division, Accra.
Mr. Robert Teiko Aryee was educated at the Accra Senior Government Boys School (a public school) where he passed the Seventh Standard Examination in 1927. Before leaving the elementary school, he passed the Cambridge & College of Preceptors Preliminary and Junior Examinations.
Picture shows R.T. Aryee ((seated, 1stfrom the left) as school prefect of Government Boys’ School.
Right after school and having passed the College of Preceptors Examination with excellent results, he enrolled to work as a clerk with the Public Survey Department. With the knowledge that many of his friends in the community spanning from Bukom, through Gbese to James Town in Accra were not privileged and also had little or no formal education and finding it difficult to explain community and national issues of the day to his buddies he attempted to teach them himself but this was proving difficult. After careful consideration, he resigned from the Survey Department, a move that was seen by his Manager at the time as not well thought through and was forced to stay on for a couple of months more before his resignation request was finally granted. When he explained his predicament saying many of his peers had little or no formal education and his plan to train as a teacher to help redress the lack of formal education in his communities, he wasn’t taken serious.
Anyway, as soon as his resignation request was granted, he swiftly started his teacher training course. He started teaching at Accra Bishop School in 1929. A few months after, he was transferred to the English Church Mission School at Larteh, in Akwapim where he spent two years. At Larteh, he was again transferred to Larteh Methodist Senior School. At these two schools he became famous for teaching music and Physical Education.
He became a certified teacher when he passed the Teachers examination in 1931. Later on, he also passed the Cambridge School Certificate by studying privately and taking foreign correspondence courses. Other schools he taught in are Accra and Dodowa Methodist schools, Krobo Odumase English Church Mission School (as headmaster) and Accra High School, where he was a House Master. At Accra High School he taught History, English and Geography.
With some teaching experience behind him, he moved back to his beloved Accra to put into practice his dream of providing formal education to his community. He launched his dream of establishing a school and by that he founded the Ebenezer School on 22nd April 1941 .
He first started with night school, in a small room provided by his uncle, teaching his friends and peers, mainly men. He then started to enrol children of school-going age and later expanded to a fully-fledged school. The idea of establishing the school came to him in a form of a vision he later recounted. Classes first began in a private house at Adedenkpo, Accra, house number (H/No.) 189, offered to him by Mr. T.I. Attoh. He started with six (6) children, and he was the only teacher at the time.
The trio, R.T. Aryee, the school founder, and his co-founders, his nephew, E.K.A. Otoo and J.T. Taye, together became the pioneers and kick-started the Ebenezer institutions (set of schools). These two teachers helped Mr. Aryee to stage concerts (plays and Cantata) in order to raise funds to pay for rents, equipment and the teachers’ salaries. It was Mr. Aryee’s intention to run his schools up to ‘Standard Seven’ or ‘Middle Form Four (4)’ but the Education Ordinance at the time did not permit him to do so. In 1945 he was forced by circumstances to turn part of his school into a Secondary School.
The school now consisted of three tranches (institutions), namely an Elementary (Primary) School, a Middle School, and a Secondary School. As the schools expanded, Mr. Aryee employed more teachers to help him run the schools. Mr. Aryee was the Headmaster of both the Elementary and Secondary institutions and Mr. E.K.A. Otoo, the Assistant Headmaster.
Ebenezer Secondary School sent its first batch of candidates for the Cambridge School Certificate Examination in December 1947. The pupils at the time could not afford the tuition fees, but ironically this empowered the founder and teaching pioneers to persevere with their intentions. Some considered this as a twist of fate for the young pupils in the sense that the name ‘ Ebenezer ’ was conceived as a result of this experience. They have been brought that far through a toilsome experience.
As the story goes, Mr. Aryee recruited strong boys, today’s equivalent of ‘machomen’, to go around the local community to find any children loitering around during the day, and bring them to the schools to be educated. This is one of the ways he ‘forced’ lots of the children at the time to gain formal education.
When the Secondary section of the school became a government assisted school in 1952, it was separated from the Primary but the preparatory was still attached to it. In the same year the Elementary (Primary) section was absorbed into the Public system. Having put his Secondary school on a Government assisted programme, Mr. Aryee was still its headmaster until his retirement in 1956. He was also the Senior History master of the Secondary School.
The founder, acknowledged by the then Governor of the Gold Coast (now the Republic of Ghana). Mr. Aryee shaking hands with the Governor.
How the name ‘EBENEZER’ came about
At Odumase Krobo, where Mr. R.T. Aryee pursued his teaching career, there was a fire incident, where his room was engulfed and after receiving help from his neighbours, the fire was put out. Most of his belongings were destroyed by the fire but among the destroyed belongings he noticed his burnt Bible. He took the Bible and upon opening the partly burnt Bible, the page that popped up was ‘1 Samuel 7:12’
Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called it ‘ Ebenezer’, saying, ‘Hitherto hath the LORD helped us‘.
Mr. Aryee also established Ebenezer Primary Schools at Dome Faase, near Papase and also at Ayikai Doblo in 1945. Mr. J.H. Ahunu was the teacher employed for the Dome Faase Ebenezer Primary School and Mr. Okrah was employed as a teacher for the Ayikai Doblo Primary School after the resignation of Mr. H.S. Addo, its first teacher. Mr. Okrah helped to improve the Ayikai Doblo School considerably. On the advent of the accelerated Development Plan for Education in 1952, Mr. Aryee handed over his primary schools to the government – Accra Ebenezer Primary, Dome Faase Ebenezer Primary and Ayikai Doblo Ebenezer Primary, were all handed over to the Government. In the same year, through Mr. Aryee’s efforts the Ebenezer Secondary School received recognition and was put on a government assisted schools programme.
In the same year, Mr. Aryee moved his Primary and Secondary Schools from Korle-Gonno to his own premises in Mamprobi. In 1953 Mr. Aryee established Ebenezer Middle School at Ayikai Doblo in addition to the Primary School. He handed over the Ayikai Doblo Ebenezer Middle School to the Government in 1962 and the first teachers in this school were ……
Both the Middle and Primary Schools are now run by the local authority. When Mr. Aryee established the Ebenezer Primary School, now L.A. Primary school, at Ayikai Doblo on 1st September 1943, the Chief of the village was Nii Ayi Kodzo II and his linguist Amankwah alias Addotse Amankwah. The land on which Mr. Aryee built the Ebenezer Middle School, now LA Middle School at Ayikai Doblo was given to him by Nii Ayi Kodzo and Nii Kofi Mensah in the presence of his elders Asafoaiatse Boye Awuley, Okaileytse Kofi, Addotse Amankwah the linguist, Oshipie Nortey, Emmanuel Lamptey Addy, Kotoku Aryee, Kpakpatse Kwartei, Lartey Kwame, Armah Koblah, Boyefio Simeon Odai Antwi and Emmanuel Armah Ashong.
The teachers who laboured with Mr. Aryee before the schools were put on the government assisted programme were Mr. E.K.A. Otoo, Joseph Tetteh Taye, Miss Joyce Quartey, Enoch Amui Amoo, Emmanuel Oblitey Amoo, E.M. Oku, Emmanuel Nii Addy and Miss Margaret Ahulu.
When Ebenezer School was non-government assisted, Mr. Aryee made Mr. J.A. Attoh of Korle-Gonno an honorary Manager of the school. When Mr. Aryee retired in 1956, Mr. C.E.A. Martinson, B.A. DIP, ED, became the new headmaster. Under Mr. C.E.A. Martinson’s leadership and skilful management the standard of the school improved even further.
After the Ebenezer Primary School had been absorbed into the Public system, one of its headmasters that should be remembered is the late Mr M. E.C. Adjei, who was headmaster of the Mamprobi Ebenezer Primary. It must be remembered for the fact that it was by his efforts that the present building occupied by the Ebenezer Primary at Mamprobi were built by the Government. The school, Ebenezer Primary School then moved from Mr. Aryee’s private premises to its present site on 10th November, 1960. The school site was land given to the government by the late Nii Tetteh Kpeshie II, Sempe Mantse.
Mr. Ataa Okai Okine, the famous Ga and Sports Master of the school, made the name ‘Tsolor’ (meaning ‘teacher’ in the Ga language) famous throughout Secondary Schools in Ghana.
Other teachers include, Mr. Offei, Mr. E.D. Boateng, Mr. Singh, Mr. Grippman, Mr. Odartey Mills …
Mr. VB Freeman (1974-1986) and Co-Education (1976 to date):
Mr. V. B Freeman took over from Mr. Martinson in 1974 as the new headmaster of the school. In 1976 the school became co-educational under the directives of Mr. Fordjour, the Commissioner for Education and Culture at the time. Thirty (30) girls were admitted to Form one (1) to join a secondary school that was an all-boys school at the time.
The school was predominantly a day school, with a few boarders housed at a hostel at House No 18, Ebenezer Crescent, which was later moved in the 1970s to House number 22, Adotei Link, Mamprobi, close to the school campus.
Considering the school was expanding and admitting many more students from the growing population in the Greater Accra Region, the next major project was to move the school to a bigger and permanent site.
A site secured at Mpoase, near Dansoman, in Accra, to house the school was developed. In the early 1980s, Form 3 students visited the school in turns, every other Wednesday, to clear weeds and have their Agricultural Science practical as a way of introducing the students to their new campus.
In April 1984, Mr. V. B. Freeman moved Forms one (1) to three (3) to the new and current campus at Mpoase, Dansoman, in the Ablekuma West Municipality of Accra. Mr. V.B. Freeman supervised the construction of the new structures of the school, including the Classroom Blocks, Science Lab, Assembly Hall, to name a few. The sterling performance of Mr. V.B. Freeman over the years at Ebenezer Secondary School, didn’t go unnoticed by his alma mater, Accra Academy, who poached him to head their school.
Mr. VB Freeman handed over as headmaster to Mrs Nancy Thompson, who embarked on the task of uplifting the image of the school through improving the academic performance. Mrs Thompson chucked academic laurels for the school, not to mention the outstanding performance of the school in sports. Mrs Thompson’s dream of uplifting Ebenezer Secondary School to a Category ‘A’ school, was cut short when she was also poached by her alma mater, Wesley Girls’ High School, Cape-Coast.
The school has enjoyed permanence in this new location and has flourished significantly over the years. It has also had many headmasters and headmistresses over the years. The academic achievements have been average on the whole with a few exceptional excellent results. There have also been major government educational changes over time and one of these changes has resulted in a name change. ‘Ebenezer Secondary School’ is now called ‘Ebenezer Senior High School’.
More infrastructure has been added. The school now has an ‘Events Podium’, a Girls dormitory and a 7-unit classroom block. It has also built a new gate house and installed an electronic signpost and school logo at the main school entrance.
Ebenezer Senior High School (formerly called Ebenezer Secondary School), started as an all-male academic institution, popularly called ‘ Padua ‘, and the old students of the school are referred to as ‘ Paduans‘. The motto of the school in Latin is ‘ Semper Perstate ‘, in English this translates to ‘Always Persevere‘.
The School founder’s family, the Aryee family.
