GirlZOffMute—Privilege, luxury and stress: Behind the gates of Ghana's international private school

DW (English)

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to study at one of the most prestigious international schools in your country? 🤔 Join us on a tour inside one in Ghana. For many, SOS-Hermann Gmeiner International College (SOS-HGIC) symbolizes opportunity and privilege. But behind the prestige lies a world of academic pressure.

Transcript

00:00Could you introduce yourself? My name is Esi Poma Iwa Tramantan. So I'm currently in SOS,

00:14Herma Minor International College, and I'm currently in my final year of SOS. So I'm

00:21going to go to university next year. Was it your dream to come to SOS and how

00:25has the experience been like so far? It wasn't necessarily my dream to come here.

00:30I've had family members that have come to the school and I've had friends that have

00:34come to school. They kind of put in my head like the good experiences of the

00:39school and so it made me kind of excited and keen to coming here even though it

00:44was not necessarily my dream. But then I think after coming here I've experienced

00:50a lot. Obviously I've been stressed at times. We've all broken down at some

00:55point but I think generally if I were to sum up my experience in SOS I'm kind of

01:00glad I came here. The GES schools, we do some sort of working as in the boarding

01:08house. Do you equally work? We have chores or what we call jobbing. So we have

01:15morning jobbing, evening jobbing, Saturday jobbing. Once in a while we do semesters and

01:20we every semester we have inspection where we clean the whole hostel and it's

01:25kind of adds to the hostel spirit or the competitiveness within our school because

01:31every hostel is trying to have the cleanest hostel so that we win a prize. We weed,

01:37we mop, we dust, we scrub, we scrub our windows. We, yeah, all of it. Based on the interactions you've had with

01:46your friends from the other schools, are there things you wished could be adopted here in SOS?

01:52I don't think there's anything the school really needs to add. We have a lot of clubs

01:56that you can join, a lot of new sports that you can try, leadership roles, exchange trips.

02:02So when it comes to adding stuff I'm not really sure but if anything reducing the

02:09amount of workload that we have in the school because at times it can be very

02:13stressful. In this school we do a lot of tests and the school tries to let us be

02:18ready for exams so sometimes the schoolwork and the amount of, like the workload we have

02:23is a lot so it's kind of stressful. Do you think the school really prepares you

02:28for the outside world? Yes, when it comes to the boarding side you get to learn all

02:33the things you'll probably need in the future. How to wash your own clothes, time

02:38management skills, socialisation skills, communication skills. I think it really

02:44teaches you and it helps you, like, just be ready for the future.

02:48How important are extracurricular activities for students like yourself?

02:53I think it's good for exercise. We don't actually do any PE, physical education in this school

03:01so you do it as your own. Some people really enjoy it. It's also good for scholarships

03:07because some people get sports scholarships to schools. So I think it's very important.

03:12It also fosters our competitiveness because we have, like some of the boys right now,

03:19they take their sports very seriously and when we have inter-hostel competitions, it's very, sports are top.

03:28Thank you so much AC for joining me today for this interview.

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