2018 National Science and Maths Quiz launched

This year's curtain-raiser is a novelty to have happened outside the University of Ghana, Legon, where the month-long popular television quiz competition will be staged.

Addressing the media at the launch of the Quiz competition, Nana Akua Ankomah-Asare, Managing Director of Primetime, organisers of the competition, said the 25th edition of the quiz is going to be unique as compared to last year's competition which saw Prempeh College in the Ashanti region won the 2017 contest after a late challenge from St. Thomas Aquinas.

She said Primetime would hold mentorship session which features various individuals excelling in the science and technology industry, as a means of exposing the participants to the career opportunities open to them as science students.

She implored the students to fully participate in all the activities and programmes that are tailor-made for them in unearthing their innate potentials.

In this year, contestants can substitute during a quiz competition.

According to Nana Akua Ankomah-Asare, competing schools can change a contestant when the latter is tired or worn-out during the competition.

Officially performing the launch of the 2018 edition of the National Science & Maths Quiz and Science festival, Ms. Catherine Appiah-Pinkrah, Director, Pre-tertiary at the Ministry of Education said a nation’s development is accelerated and sustained through improved infrastructure, technology, better medical care and research.

It is against this backdrop that she said the Ministry of Education will not relent on it efforts in providing an enabling environment for the teaching and learning of Science and Mathematics at all levels of education in Ghana.

"As a nation, we owe it as a duty that our youth are encouraged in every way possible to develop these talents from the early age. The students are the major resource the nation has to harness for a meaningful socio-economic development," she added.

How it all began

It all began in early 1993, on the tennis court of the University of Ghana, Legon. Mr. Kwaku Mensa-Bonsu, Chairman of Primetime, was at the court to play tennis with his playmates, the late Professors Marian Ewurama Addy and Ebenezer Kweku Awotwe.

Mr. Mensa-Bonsu was curious as to why birds could stand on a live electric wire without getting electrocuted, but human beings could not do same.

Meanwhile, competing schools are expected to arrive at the University of Ghana, Legon from, June 6, 2018, for the start of the preliminary contests on Monday, June 11, 2018.