KmDC primary school in Gbeika town Dodo chiefdom Kenema district is one of the schools in the country that are faced with the problems of teachers, teaching and learning materials.
The school was established in 1998 with three sitter toilets, six class rooms structure with a store and an office with enough furniture but the school has a single teacher who is the headmaster and teacher in classes one to six since its inception. Mr. Ansu Masco Bockarie with Teachers Certificate (TC) qualification from Eastern Polytechnic distance education is the only teacher in the school for the past sixteen years.
Mr. Bockarie speaking to the press at the school campus said life is very miserable for him as he is finding it very difficult to cope with the teaching, a situation he said he has explained several times to the Ministry of Education Science and Technology (MEST) in Kenema but to no avail. He said at one time the ministry sent one supervisor called Sumaila to the school who took record and snapshots of what goes on in the school but nothing good has come out of the visit.
He explained that every day he prepares his lesson notes at night for the six classes and then early in the morning by 6 am after prayer he goes directly to the school, sometimes using torch light to write on the chalk boards from classes one to six. Then after which he returns to class one and start to teach where he said he usually encounter more problems as the children there are difficult to control and there he takes longer time and later continue into the other classes.
He admitted that with him alone effective learning will not take place throughout but yet still several pupils have gone through the school some with good grades in the National Primary School Examination (NPSE). He said during the last NPSE four pupils were sent for the exam and all passed with excellent grades with a girl topping them with 350 scores currently attending at Methodist Secondary school in Kenema. Masco Bockarie further revealed that his current enrolment is 110 pupils and the school has never benefited from any food supply or subsidy among others, he said he is told that unless his school has seed number without it they will not benefit from the government, but said only UNICEF that have gave some books, pens and pencils to the school in the past. He said before now there was one community teacher that was helping him whom the community was not paying but they were working twice in a week for him in his farm as a motivation for him to do the work. The school campus has pipe borne water facility and a football field. The headmaster said he received salary through the parent school in Panguma Lower Bambara chiefdom and that he is calling on the government to send teachers, teaching and learning materials to the school.
By Saffa Moriba
Friday July 01, 2016
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