Students Dropping Out of School in Rivercess Due to Lack of Teachers
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Loading... - Beatrice Darko
- 15 Aug 2022
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Jacob Beegar sits on a rattan chair under a palaver hut in Kporkon while his friends run around the hut. He seems not happy. The 15-year-old should be in the 4th grade at the nearby Giemengbleh Public School in Kporkon Monweh District. But the school has been closed since 2020.
"My ma and pa poor, that why I want to go to school to help them," says Jacob. "But the way I not going to school again, that mean I will be poor like them."
The school shut in 2020 when the last teacher finally left. Even before the school closed it was doing a poor job of teaching kids in this village.
"The school had just one teacher teaching more than one hundred and forty some more children," according to Jacob's uncle John. "But the man was not getting pay from the government so he closed the school and left."
The school building - made of sticks with mud walls - has begun to collapse. It sits now, a roofless ruin, on the edge of the village - a symbol of the crumbling dreams of children and parents here.
The closest school is in Boegeezay, an hour away by motorbike. Jacob's uncle does not have the $LD1000 it costs each day to send his nephew there. Neither do other families here. Jetta Wee, 10, and Blessing Duo, 11, are among other kids sitting under the palaver hut instead of going to school. Other children moved to stay with relatives in Boegeezay or the city of Buchanan.
Many schools in River Cess are closing because of teacher shortages. Parents and teachers blame poor management by the Ministry for Education. Potential teachers find it impossible to get on the payroll. When teachers leave they continue to get salaries. And the ministry does not replace teachers when they leave. Read More...
