ACHIMOTA SCHOOL BOARDING LIFE Achimota School is a big school with a vast population of students. It has therefore made provision for students who want to be boarders. The school has 14 boarding houses with each house having two housemistresses or housemasters in girls and boys houses respectively. They monitor the activities of the houses and make sure all is well with students. Most of the houses are divided into dormitories with “dorm-heads” who control the behaviour of the students in their dorms to ensure no one goes against the rules in the dormitories. The daily routine is stereotyped and is almost the same in all the houses. Students wake up at 5:00am, bath, do their various work and get ready for inspection at 6:00am. Students or seniors on duty inspect their work. After this, students have a short devotion and leave their houses for breakfast. The whole school meets in the chapel for devotion after breakfast. They then disperse to the classrooms to learn until 2:00pm when classes end. They go for lunch and return to their various houses for an hour of rest. They can choose to do anything until 6:15pm when they leave the boarding houses once again for supper and prep afterwards. Bedtime for all the houses is at 9:30pm.

Boarding houses in general and particularly in Achimota are named or given names. Here in Achimota there are 8 boys' houses and 6 girls' houses. Three of the boys houses are named Fraser, Guggisberg, and Aggrey. These are the names of the founding fathers of the school. The others are Gyamfi who was a good student but died in his teens. The rest of the boys houses are Cadbury, Livingstone, Stopford, and Lugard. The girls' houses are Slessor, Kingsley, Clark, MacCarthy, and Susan Ofori-Attah who was the wife of Sir Ofori-Attah of the big six. House 17 which hasn’t been named after anyone yet, may be named after the present headmistress of the school in the person of Mrs. Charlotte Brew-Graves. All the houses have a population of about 70-120 students with an average of 100 students per house.

In conclusion, the boarding life in Achimota is interesting as well as beneficial. First of all when you come to the school as a novice or greenhorn, your house serves as the first form of socialization for you. You become familiar with people in your house and make friends with them first before going out of this domain. Also you learn how to work and take initiative since all students are assigned to special duties in their various houses. This prepares you for a better future. In a nutshell, it helps you to live in harmony with other students and the community as a whole.