The first purely Catholic Boys School in the Ghana’s Volta Region, Bishop Herman College (BIHECO) at Kpando in the Catholic Diocese of Ho would be 70 years next year 2022 and plans have been put in place by the National Executive Committee (NEC) to launch the Anniversary with a Fundraising Dinner on Sunday, November 28, 2021 with year-long series of activities.
Bishop Herman College was founded on February 28, 1952 at Kpando by the then Keta Diocese of the Catholic Church as a Boys Secondary Boarding School.
Under the distinguished patronage of Togbe Tepre Hodo IV, President of the Volta Regional House of Chiefs and an old Student, the 70th anniversary is on the Theme: “70 Years of Excellence in Catholic Education.”
The launch which would take place at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra at 6:00pm would also be used to raise GHc500,000 to kickstart the rehabilitation of the School’s Multipurpose Giant Block which is in a serious dilapidated state.
In order to raise targeted funds, the Anniversary Planning Committee has put tickets on sale and is encouraging all past students of BIHECO and friends to the School to purchase the tickets at GHc500 for Regular Single, GHc800 for Regular double, GHc1000 for VIP Single and GHc1,500 for VIP Double.
There had been several calls on the members of the Bishop Herman Old Boys Union (BHOBU), lovers of BIHECO and other philanthropists to come onboard on the rescue mission of the Giant block and other serious infrastructural challenges of the School.
NEC is encouraging all BHOBUs to purchase their online tickets via https://bit.ly/bhohu21 or Dial Code *713*33*159# on their phones.
Agreeably, it can be said that seventy years of holistic Catholic Education is no mean achievement for a purely Catholic Boys School-Bishop Herman College named after Bishop Augustine Herman, a Frenchman who was Bishop of the then Keta Diocese from 1923-1945.
Bishop Herman College was founded on February 28, 1952 by the then Keta Diocese of the Catholic Church as a boy’s Secondary Boarding School.
Bishop Herman’s legendary exemplary Christian life and his love for education saw him setting up Schools in most of the communities he succeeded in planting the Catholic faith.
It came thus as no surprise that when the Keta Diocese wanted to establish an exemplary, par excellence secondary school to train young boys in the pursuit of spiritual and academic discipline they decided to name it after him.
BIHECO became a reality through committed faithful of the Catholic Church in the then Keta Diocese, the people of Kpando-Aloryi [on whose land the school stands] and others from the Netherlands (through the initiative of the first Headmaster).
The school started in the premises of the Roman Catholic Mission, Kpando (Gabi) and in 1954 moved to its current location on the Aloryi Hills overlooking the Kpando township and the magnificent Volta Lake.
From 1952-1955 when the first batch of BIHECANS completed their School Certificate course. BIHECO was a private Mission School. It was, however, absorbed into the public school system as a Government Assisted College in the same year, 1955. The school run only the GCE Ordinary Level programme until 1962 when the Sixth Form course was introduced allowing for the Advanced Level pre-university programme.
Like most of Ghana’s secondary schools, BIHECO now runs the Senior Secondary School Certificate programme for the 3 years duration since the GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ Levels were phased out in 1996.
Great Missionaries like Rev. Fr. John Beeckers, Rev. Frs. Velboer, Brockhoff, Manshanden, Weyden, Zijlstra, Giesen, leo Brouwer, Peter de Vries, Breukel, Myerscough, and Van Dijk were those who actively raised funds throughout the Diocese of Keta and in Europe for the opening of this College.
