Dear Students, Staff, Parents, Alumni, and Friends of JMC,
It gives me great joy to welcome you to the 2024/2025 school year at the Heights after a restful and refreshing long holiday. The year started with great excitement and positive energy with the arrival of the Class of 2030 and the new members of the Class of 2027 on August 31, 2024. Following their arrival, the freshmen underwent a week-long orientation designed to help them adjust to the rhythm of life at the cradle of Hope Reborn, thus making what would otherwise be a difficult and challenging transition easy and smooth. That said, I wish to express profound gratitude to all who worked so hard to ensure a pleasant start at the Heights for our new students, especially hostel parents and school prefects designates.
Now in its third week, the school year was officially opened on the twenty-ninth day of the month with the celebration of the Mass of the Holy Spirit, during which returning students who distinguished themselves in character and learning were fittingly recognised, and the new students duly inducted. Among the students fittingly recognised are the twenty-five Phoenixes who obtained an annual average of at least ninety percent (90%) during the 2023/2024 school year. They are our Phoenixes of the Month and deservedly so.
As the new school year unfolds amidst growing economic hardship, our faculty and students continue to make remarkable efforts to adjust to the use of technology in teaching and learning to be better prepared in the twenty-first century for the stewardship of creation which is the vocation of the human person. I am filled with gratitude for their resolve in the said regard and laud their commitment to overcoming challenges associated with the use of technology in education.
I would be remiss not to applaud our 2024 graduates whose outstanding performance in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination is a testament to the pursuit of human excellence that characterizes Jesuit education and our college’s commitment to its realisation. Coming on the heels of the tenth-anniversary celebration of the college, the brilliant performance across board of our newest graduates is an inspiration to pursue the Jesuit ideal of the Magis as we begin the second decade of our foundation. Congratulations to our 2024 graduates many of whom are adapting well to new learning environments and cultures in colleges and universities across the world. (see below charts of the performance analysis of the college’s 2024 WASSCE result).
Coming together as a community of scholarship, service, and prayer, we are more than ever resolved to form men and women of conscience, competence, compassion, and commitment, and we entreat your unwavering cooperation and firm support in this regard. This appeal has become necessary in view of the non-compliance of many parents/guardians with given administrative instructions about our way of proceeding at the Heights. A case in point is the bringing of edibles to the Mass of the Holy Spirit in violation of the instruction, to the contrary, given by the chaplain. Such blatant disregard for instruction goes against the Jesuit ethos of the college and will not be tolerated in the slightest. Consequently, students who were found wanting in this regard have been duly detained and will be adequately sanctioned. It goes without saying that it is in the best interest of parents/guardians to adhere strictly to the regulations of the college to compliment our formative and educative endeavours.
To conclude, I wish to restate the commitment of the college to the holistic formation of her students for the greater glory of God and the common good. Indeed, JMC strives to form the ‘whole person’ for a world plagued by numerous challenges that would best be addressed by a high degree of human excellence, the end product of our brand of education. I am confident that you will no doubt support this noble endeavour with great generosity this school year and beyond.
In much gratitude,
Fr. Alexander E. IRECHUKWU, S.J.