British Council Completes Research Training for School Pupils

Over the years, violence among school pupils has been a burning issue not only for teachers, and parents, but also the public as a whole. It could be argued that if not permanent but a temporary solution to this menace has been elusive.
As part of efforts to address school violence in Sierra Leone, the Project Coordinator of British Council, Joseph Abu, on Thursday disclosed that engaging pupils in school research projects will solve the problem of violence among school going boys and girls.
He made this statement in an interview with Awoko at the end of a three days research project training for pupils organized by the British Council in Freetown.
He said the research project was one in a series of activities that was drawn up for what he called a peace and conflict resolution project under the dreams and teams wing of the British Council. He pointed out that “this research is a novelty in Sierra Leone. I believe that carrying out research by pupils will arrest the problem of violence because pupils will be able to
address rare issues that affect their attitudes in schools.” He added that “conducting researches will give school boys and girls a good foundation to identify their own problems, give them first hand information, and become active members in knowing their own problems and map out solutions to the problems they identify.”
Mr. Abu revealed that they had to invite pupils from the Mary Mount School for Girls in Kenya, where a similar project had been firmly established.
He noted that Sierra Leone and Kenya had certain features in common on issues relating to violence adding that recently Kenya had a wave of violent activities after their election. He mentioned that “because of this violence feature the two countries share, the participants from Kenya did a presentation that gave an insight into addressing matters of violence.”
He said a lot of activities have been organized in the country on school violence but to no avail adding that if pupils were involved in finding out their own problems through school research projects, violence in schools will be a thing of the past.
By Abdul Samba Brima