Like many other struggling education facilities both in rural and urban communities across the Country, Sammy C’s Primary School, located in Maforay village, Koya Chiefdom, Port Loko District is a beneficiary of education materials from the Ministry of Basic, Senior Secondary Education.
The school in a humble rural setting, established with the intention to cater for vulnerable boys and girls drew the attention of MBSSE officials, as a result of a video showing pupils of the singing about the poor condition in which they are being educated, as future leaders. In the song the pupils called on the school’s proprietor Sammy Conteh who is also constrained to pay attention to their suffering plight, which made rounds on social media.
As a result of the posting on social media and the outcry from some sections of the public castigating the MBSSE, officials of the ministry dispatched a team, headed by the Deputy Director, Foday Conteh from the District Education Office in Port Loko. On arrival Conteh said he discovered that indeed the school is badly in need of not only teaching and learning materials, but also needs urgent fixing if the children are to survive the next rainy season.
Conteh said he found out that the school is an unapproved community primary facility with few and unqualified teachers owned by an indigene of Koya Chiefdom, Sammy Conteh who has no means of adequately equipping the school or to pay trained and qualified teachers to deliver the objectives of the free quality school education. “Most of the community schools will end up performing badly in public exams, which government wants to change the narrative through the FQSE”, he noted.
As an immediate stop gap measure, staff of the FQSE provided core text books in Mathematics, English, Science and Social Studies, including an assorted amount of exercise books to the school. Staff of the Free Quality School Education Secretariat promised to take urgent steps to complete the makeshift school structure, ensuring that no child is left behind to acquire quality school education, a priority to enhance national development.
By ade.campbell@awokonewspaper.sl