The Annual Free Vacation School first started as Vacation Classes which is one of our flagship programmes. The first class was held in August 1995 with the main objective of giving focused academic support to Senior High School (SHS) students especially those from deprived communities to enable them to pass their final external examinations to gain admissions into the various tertiary institutions in the country.

The need for this became apparent after research conducted by the Academy in 1994 on academic progression from second cycle to tertiary institutions by students from deprived communities such as the “Zongos”. The focus group was students in second-cycle institutions in the Greater Accra Region. The findings of the research showed that more than two–thirds of Muslim students who completed secondary education between 1990 and 1995 could not progress to a tertiary institution due to poor performance.

The Vacation School was a practical attempt to reverse this trend. Subjects taught at the Vacation School include General Arts, General Science, Agriculture, Visual Arts, Home Economics and Technical School Electives. We also offered guidance and counselling services to the students. In the year 2004, tuition and educational counselling was also introduced into the vacation school for Junior High School (JHS) Students.

An average of 500 students are registered yearly with more than 7,000 students registered to date. The school has also gained government recognition and support in terms of logistics such as textbooks and syllabuses.

In 2007, the school was named after the late Dr. Ahmed Issaka Abdulai of University of Ghana Business School whose sudden demise occurred in the same year. Until his death, Dr. Abdulai was the Chairman of Board of Patrons of the Ghana Muslim Academy since the inception of the organization and was highly instrumental in getting the school growing from strength to strength, year after year.