Top 20 Senior High Schools in Ghana (2026): The Leading Schools by Public Record

Why a list of the best senior high schools is hard to make fairly

Ask ten parents in Accra, Kumasi or Tamale which senior high school is the best and you will hear ten answers, and most will name the school they or their relatives attended. That is natural. The trouble starts when a website prints a neat table of "the top 20" without telling you what it measured.

In Ghana the obvious measure would be WASSCE results for each school. The West African Examinations Council releases results to candidates and to schools every year, and the Ministry of Education talks about national pass rates. We have not found an official public table that puts school against school, and we hold no school-level results ourselves. So any website that prints one is either working from a leaked or partial source, or from guesswork. We would rather show you what we can stand behind.

What we can stand behind is two things. The first is the National Science and Maths Quiz, which has crowned a national champion every year since 1994 apart from 2010 and 2011, and whose grand finals are public. The second is the demand figure the Ministry of Education prints in its 2026 school selection guidelines: the ten schools that candidates chose most often as their first choice in the 2025 cycle, and how many places each had.

Neither is a full picture of a school. A quiz measures a small team of science and maths students on a given night. A demand figure measures reputation and parental choice. Put together and printed with their working, they make an honest list. They do not make a verdict on teaching.

How this list was built

Every school on this page sits in a pool of 45 senior high schools. A school gets into the pool when it has reached an NSMQ grand final since 1994, or when it appears in the Ministry's top ten for first-choice selections in 2025, or when readers ask about it by name as a girls', boys' or mixed school. Each pool school then earns points.

Points are added up and schools are put in order. Where two schools have the same points, the older school goes first, and if the founding year is not confirmed the school goes last among its ties. That tie-break is a way to put a list in order. It is not a claim that the older school is better.

Founding years are as reported on each school's Wikipedia page when we checked, and we leave the year empty when the page was not clear. We do not use fees, facilities or "Category A" labels, because we could not confirm any of them from an official source. The full method for every list on the site is on the rankings methodology page.

The list: 20 leading senior high schools in Ghana, 2026

• Presbyterian Boys' Senior High School (PRESEC)
• Opoku Ware School
• Prempeh College
• St. Peter's Senior High School
• Mfantsipim School
• Achimota School
• St. Augustine's College
• Adisadel College
• Ghana Senior High Technical School (Ghana Secondary Technical School)
• St. Thomas Aquinas Senior High School
• Pope John Senior High School and Minor Seminary
• St. Francis Xavier Minor Seminary
• Ghana Senior High School, Koforidua
• Mawuli School
• T.I. Ahmadiyya Senior High School
• Tamale Senior High School
• St. Louis Senior High School (Girls)
• Keta Senior High Technical School
• Sunyani Senior High School
• Yaa Asantewaa Girls' Senior High School

The first five in plain words

Presbyterian Boys' Senior High School (PRESEC) is a boys' school in Legon, Greater Accra Region, founded in 1938, with a Presbyterian background. It has won the NSMQ 9 times (1995, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2026). It has been runner-up in 1996, 2013, 2019 and 2021.

Opoku Ware School is a boys' school in Kumasi, Ashanti Region, founded in 1952, with a Catholic background. It has won the NSMQ 2 times (1997 and 2002). It has been runner-up in 1995, 2003, 2005, 2008 and 2016. It finished third in 2020, 2023 and 2025. The Ministry of Education counted 8,278 first-choice selections for it in the 2025 placement cycle against 1,040 places.

Prempeh College is a boys' school in Kumasi, Ashanti Region, founded in 1949. It has won the NSMQ 5 times (1994, 1996, 2015, 2017 and 2021). It has been runner-up in 1997 and 2022.

St. Peter's Senior High School is a boys' school in Nkwatia, Eastern Region, founded in 1957, with a Catholic background. It has won the NSMQ 3 times (2000, 2005 and 2018). It has been runner-up in 1998, 2002, 2004 and 2006. It finished third in 2019.

Mfantsipim School is a boys' school in Cape Coast, Central Region, founded in 1876, with a Methodist background. It has won the NSMQ 4 times (1999, 2014, 2024 and 2025). It has been runner-up in 2000. It finished third in 2016.

How to read the list

Start with the points column, then look at what produced them. A school with many NSMQ finals and no place in the Ministry's top ten has a strong science and maths record but is not necessarily the most sought after. A school with demand points and no NSMQ record is popular with families, which usually reflects location, boarding, programmes or reputation built over decades.

The "first choices per place" column deserves a second look. Achimota, for example, drew 16,628 first-choice selections for 1,250 places in 2025. That is roughly 13 candidates for every seat before anyone is placed. It says a great deal about how hard entry is. It says nothing about what happens in the classroom afterwards.

The table below is the Ministry's full top ten, so you can see the demand figures without our points on top.

Source: Ministry of Education, 2026 school selection and placement guidelines (PDF). Note that the Ministry list includes technical institutes and day schools, so it is not the same set as the NSMQ schools.

Leading senior high schools by region

The list is spread over 9 of Ghana's 16 regions. Regions with no school on this list: Upper East, Bono East, Western North, Oti, Savannah, Ahafo, North East. The NSMQ record clusters in a few regions, so the absence of a region says little about the schools there. Our region pages list every senior high school on the register, and each has a section on Category A, B and C schools in that region.

Boys', girls' and mixed schools

The list above mixes all three. If you want to look at one group, we publish a list for each: leading boys' senior high schools, leading girls' senior high schools and leading mixed senior high schools. The separate lists matter because the NSMQ points above favour schools that have reached the grand final, and most of the champions are boys' schools, so a girls' school can be a leading name and still show few points here.

Public and private, and the cost question

The register holds 1,175 senior high schools, of which 866 are recorded as public and 291 as private. Every school on the list above is a public school. Public senior high schools fall under the Free SHS policy, but a school can still ask for items and boarding-related costs, and those vary. We show a fee on a school page only when the school published it, with the date, and we never estimate one. Read Free SHS in numbers for the policy figures, and ask the school directly for its list of required items.

Choosing beyond the top 20

Most candidates will not get into a school on this list, and that is normal. In 2026 the CSSPS placed 527,932 of 604,567 qualified candidates automatically, which is 87.3%. The official rules for the eight choices are in the Ministry's guidelines.

• You select eight schools in total, ranked in order of preference.
• You pick programmes and a residential choice for each, with five boarding and three day choices.
• You cannot choose more than two Category A schools or more than three Category B schools.
• You may choose all eight from Category C.
• Thirty per cent of the places in Category A schools are reserved for candidates from public junior high schools.

Read our plain guide to Category A, B and C schools and the region-by-region category pages. Use the BECE aggregate calculator to see how your grades might fit, and the placement guide for the steps after the results.

A practical way to build a shortlist: pick two ambitious choices from schools like those above, three realistic choices in your region, and three safe choices that run the programme you want and are close enough to attend as a day student. Check the programme first. A school that does not offer General Science will not place you in General Science, whatever its name.

What we could not confirm

• Category lists. The Ministry's guidelines explain the categories but we could not find an official public list of which school is in which. Several websites publish lists that disagree with each other and do not cite a source. We do not repeat them.
• School-level WASSCE results. Not held. If WAEC or the Ministry publishes an official school table, we will use it and cite it.
• Founding years for a few schools. We leave them empty rather than guess.

Frequently asked questions

How is this list different from a WASSCE league table?

A league table would rank schools on exam results. We do not hold school-level WASSCE results for Ghana, and we have not found an official school-by-school table published by WAEC, so we have not made one. This list uses the NSMQ record, which is public, and the Ministry of Education's count of first-choice selections, which is official.

What are the top 20 best senior high schools in Ghana?

Our list of 20 leading senior high schools is in the table above, led by Presbyterian Boys' Senior High School (PRESEC), Opoku Ware School, Prempeh College, St. Peter's Senior High School and Mfantsipim School. It is ordered by public record, the NSMQ grand finals and the Ministry of Education's 2025 first-choice figures, not by WASSCE results.

Which school in Ghana is considered the best in 2026?

There is no official answer, because no official school-by-school WASSCE table is published that we could find. On the NSMQ record, Presbyterian Boys' Senior High School (PRESEC) leads with 9 national titles including the 2026 title.

Which senior high school is the most difficult to get into?

Among the schools the Ministry names, Kumasi Technical Institute had the most first-choice selections in 2025 (19,792), with T.I. Ahmadiyya, Kumasi, and Achimota next. Measured as first choices per place, T.I. Ahmadiyya (14.6) and Kumasi Technical Institute (14.3) were the most contested. These are the Ministry's figures for the 2025 cycle, shown in the table above.

What are the top 10 secondary schools in Ghana?

Take the first ten rows of the table: Presbyterian Boys' Senior High School (PRESEC), Opoku Ware School, Prempeh College, St. Peter's Senior High School, Mfantsipim School, Achimota School, St. Augustine's College, Adisadel College, Ghana Senior High Technical School (Ghana Secondary Technical School), St. Thomas Aquinas Senior High School. The same caution applies: this is a list ordered by public record.

Which are the best girls' and boys' senior high schools?

We publish separate lists: boys, girls and mixed.

How many Category A schools can I choose?

No more than two, under the 2026 guidelines. You can pick up to three Category B schools and all eight from Category C. See Category A, B and C schools.

Which schools are Category A?

We could not find an official public list, so we do not name schools as Category A. The Ministry's guidelines do say how many you may choose from each category. Your junior high head teacher has the selection form that shows each school's category.

Which school is the best for science students?

The NSMQ record is the best public signal of strong science and maths teaching that we have. Schools with several finals appear near the top of our list. Still, check that a school runs General Science before you pick it. The CSSPS vacancy directory shows programmes for each school with open places: see CSSPS, school vacancies directory.

Is this list updated?

We re-check it each month during placement season and after every NSMQ final, and show the date the facts were last checked at the top of the page.

Can a school pay to be on this list?

No. Nobody pays to be on any list on this site, and we describe our method in full on the methodology page.

Update log

Sources

• Ministry of Education, 2026 school selection and placement guidelines (PDF) (checked 2026-10-12)
• CSSPS, school vacancies directory (checked 2026-10-12)
• Wikipedia, Ghana National Science and Maths Quiz (list of past winners) (checked 2026-10-12)
• Ghana News Agency, PRESEC reclaims NSMQ crown, September 2026
• Graphic Online, 2025 NSMQ grand finale
• NSMQ, official site