A school named after President Koroma, in New Marforki Town ,Marforki Chiefdom in the Port Loko District is in a dilapidated condition, as the un- finished mud building and its environment is not conducive for learning.
The Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma Junior Secondary School is a three classroom building school that was established in 2009 and is the only junior secondary school in the New Marfoki Town with has 36 boys and 70 girls. It is said to have started with 125 pupils but now has only 53 due to the dilapidated structure of the building and the inconvenience it poses to the pupils.
Each classroom cannot accommodate more than 20 pupils while they lack proper ventilation with no toilet facilities and not enough furniture and learning materials.
The Acting Principal, Abdul Aziz Kamara, said that the community people came together and decided to have a junior secondary school to educate their children, since there is no secondary school in the entire community.
He said initially, when children completed their primary education, they are either forced to go to other towns where there are secondary schools or stop going to school altogether-a situation which has resulted in an increase in the rate of dropouts and alarming teenage pregnancy.
He said parents then opted to send their children for early marriage because they could not afford to take care of them in secondary schools situated in big towns. As a result, most of them had become victims of teenage pregnancy and early pregnancy.
He emphasized that most of the children attending President Koroma’s Secondary School are teenage mothers and their performances in the school are not too good, since they equally have to take care of their children.
Kamara said that the school is not receiving funds from the Government to pay staff salaries, but through assistance from the community.
He reiterated that through counselling initiated by Teachers and Mothers’ Club in the town, they have been able to convince some teenage girls and most of them have been re-admitted into the school.
However, he stated that due to the condition of the school, most of the children have stopped coming, since there are no toilet facilities; the building is incomplete, with some part of it on the brink of collapse.
The Acting Principal buttressed in a demeaning statement, that the lack of toilet facilities in the school has resulted in children attending to nature in nearby bushes-a situation he regarded as quite appalling.
He said that this year, they sent the first batch of pupils for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) with no female candidates and are hopeful that they will come out successful.
By AbibatuKamara
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