We are coming home: hail Great BOGISS, the lily of the north

Bolgatanga Girls’ Senior High School (BOGISS) was the only girls’ school in the Upper East Region for a very long time. Call her the Lily of the North. She (BOGISS) has been responsible for providing access to education for many girls from all over the country: from Kumasi to Sekondi, from Accra to Bimbilla, from Tamale to Yua, from Yinduri to Cape Coast and from Volta to Pungu.

BOGISS has produced many great women who are contributing in diverse ways to nation-building; as lawyers, nurses, doctors, judges, teachers, engineers, scientists, caterers, designers and weavers, etc.

Starting as Bolgatanga Government Girls Middle Boarding School in 1956, the Lily of the North was transformed into Bolgatanga Women’s Training College during 1965 in response to widespread demands for a women’s training college in the region. She eventually became ‘Bolgatanga Girls’ Secondary School’ in 1973. The name ‘BOGISS’ concretised from then, and her aim has always been to educate girls holistically through effective teaching and learning – so the students can acquire knowledge and skills to realise their potentials. Its ‘old girls’ have always been called ‘Pogmeksi’ in Gurune – meaning ‘a real woman’ or a ‘virtuous woman’.

The school has grown from only a handful of girls in the 1950s to a student population of 2,828 as at the 2022 academic year, with a teaching staff population of 112. The non-teaching staff population is recorded in the same year as 60. Situated within communities which practice a patrilineal system of inheritance, the school has been instrumental to nurturing the life-skills, confidence and ambition in girls from all walks of life. As the school celebrates 50 years and readies for its Homecoming on November 25, 2023, it calls on all well-wishers and advocates of girl-child education to support it in any way that they can to enable BOGISS continue training more girls, and in more effective and sustainable ways.

Join us in our homecoming on November 25, 2023 – and wish us well.

We hail thee, great BOGISS.

BOGISS, our hope for the years to come.

The great and only shining star that leads the future girls.

Join us in working to shape the great BOGISS. Adopt her, and help nurture her to higher heights for God and country.