13yr KNUST student forces school to review age bracket on admission forms

Incredible, breadth taking, record setting will be an understatement to describe the academic laurels of Ruth Gyan Dakwah who has begun attending lectures as a first year Mathematics student of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) at the young age of thirteen (13).

To state it succinctly, Ruth’s mates who started school with her are now in the Junior High School (SHS) yet to write their Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

Narrating her story to Ultimate News’ Eno Safo she recounted, that she was skipped a couple of times ahead of her class till she got to the JHS when she wrote her BECE in the first year and passed to enter St. Louis SHS to read General Science.

“When I was in KG 1, I went for only two terms and went to KG 2, from there I went to class one, through to class two, three and four. In class four, I spent only one term and I went to class five and I was skipped to JHS one. I passed the BECE in JHS one and I went to St Louis Senior High School,” she recounted.

Ruth, a third daughter of her eight (8) siblings wants to be a mathematics lecturer and then move on to specialize in space science to build Ghana in that direction.

Her father Kwadwo Gyan Dakwah a physics and maths teacher at the Prempeh College told Ultimate News this will not be the first of his eight (8) children to have set this record.

He narrates that Ruth’s eldest sister Grace entered the University of Ghana at fourteen years and at eighteen is now a final year student, President of the Pentecost Students’ Association and Secretary of the student’s wing of the English Department of the University of Ghana.

Grace at the age of eleven, wrote her West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WAEC) right after JHS as a private student and had good grades even before she set foot into the Wesley Girls Senior High School

“She was schooled for four months at the age of eleven and she had B3 in English, B3 in French, and B3 in government and C5 in core maths and C6 in Social Studies, E8 in literature,” Mr Gyan Dakwah narrated.

Mr Dakwah’s second daughter, Josephine Gyan Dakwah whom Mr Gyan Dakwah calls her brightest daughter was due to enter the University at eleven but was stopped in order to tutor Ruth to follow in her steps.

She was denied admission into the KNUST medical school and offered computer science at the age of fifteen but declined the offer and is studying German to enter a medical school in Germany.

But what kind of tutoring or perhaps genes could be creating these nonconventional students right here in Ghana. Question Eno Safo put cunningly to Mr Gyan Dakwah.

He explained, “When they are toddlers, their mother will teach them up to a certain stage they will come to my school where the difficult things start. They have intensive home education which I employ teachers from Prempeh College to teach. I buy a set of the books they use in school so that if you are in class one and you finish the class one set you can study class two set, then class three set of books till even four years ahead of their peers.”

He indicated that he takes the children as a project which demands deliberate planning and investments to achieve a set target.

It has not been the father’s effort alone. Ruth’s mother Delight Gyan Dakwah who calls herself the nursery teacher of the home taught the children how to write.

She told Eno Safo she is encouraged by the achievements of her girls and is more poised to continue helping her younger children to catch up with their older siblings.

But this will not be all, there are five other children in the pipeline with one tipped to break the record of Ruth, Grace and Josephine.

Mr Dakwah told Ultimate News. He is looking at his son entering the university at eleven years and that project as he chooses to call it has begun with his sixth child.

Ruth has challenged the status quo and now the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology has been forced to scrap the age brackets on its forms; something the administration of the school never envisaged.

By: Ghana/Ultimatefmonline.com/106.9FM/Ivan Heathcote Fumador

The post 13yr KNUST student forces school to review age bracket on admission forms appeared first on Ultimate FM.

Incredible, breadth taking, record setting will be an understatement to describe the academic laurels of Ruth Gyan Dakwah who has begun attending lectures as a first year Mathematics student of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) at the young age of thirteen (13). To state it succinctly, Ruth’s mates who started school […]

The post 13yr KNUST student forces school to review age bracket on admission forms appeared first on Ultimate FM.

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