Grand Bassa County – Students of the main public high school in District #3 in Grand Bassa County on Monday morning stormed the provisional town of Compound #3, demanding teachers ahead of their first semester exams.
Report by Alpha Daffae Senkpeni, [email protected]
“We have major subjects to take and we don’t have teachers. Most of our teachers are volunteers and they are not well taken care of, and this will harm us because if we are not taught well how will we take the WAEC exams” – Student Emmanuel Blaton, leader of the protesting Gorblee High Students
Gorblee High School is one of two public high schools in Grand Bassa County next to Bassa High in Buchanan City, and has been without instructors of major subjects including Geography, Physics, and History, Chemistry, and Language Arts since the start of the academic year.
While on the rampage on Monday, the protesting students bullied the district education officer (DEO) before storming the district’s administration building – a move, they said would have attracted attention to their plight and a subsequent solution to the problem.
Currently, the junior and senior high sections of the school have only six teachers on payroll and volunteer teachers have now dropped the chalk because they are not being compensated.
“In this high school, there are no teachers,” said Emmanuel Blanton of the 12th grade, the leader of the aggrieved students.
“We have only three teachers that are on government’s payroll that are teaching senior high division and we are heading for exams, and we don’t want to get grades that will embarrass us.”
“We have major subjects to take and we don’t have teachers. Most of our teachers are volunteers and they are not well taken care of, and this will harm us because if we are not taught well how will we take the WAEC exams.”
Gorblee High School dismally in last year’s West African Examination Council (WAEC) tests with the result showing that only five students out of 54 passed the regional exams.
Many of these protesting students fear that they risk similar fate if the problem is not remedied.
At an emergency meeting held with the students to ease the tension, the principle, Amos Telo said the lack of teachers is an age-old challenge the school is facing.
He reminded the students that many of the volunteer teachers have abandoned the classes because the Ministry of Education’s biometric process failed to include them on the payroll after they had volunteered for years.
“Those that were denied (by the biometric) had no hope and they told me ‘we are not teaching’ because no man can teach for over five years when he’s not getting anything,” said Telo.
One of the volunteer teachers, Nathaniel Briggs lamented his frustration, and despite their services to the school, the government has ignored their concerns.
“Even though we heard from the government that they were going to vet some of the volunteer teachers to be placed on payroll, but we hoping to see that it happens,” Briggs said, while stressing that they will continue to stay out of the class room until their plight is addressed.
The DEO, Rosina Cole admitted that the problem has been lingering since she took assignment in the district, and said the replacement of teachers at rural public schools is far fetch because of the slowness of the MOE.
“We are wrong, (because) once you (students) don’t have teachers, we should be the ones to be there and solve the problem,” she said.
Miss Cole, however, assured the students that the situation will be resolved following the end of the school’s semester examinations.
District Representative, Jeh Byron Browne, who opted to mitigate the tension described the constant dependency on volunteer teachers at public schools as a violation of the constitution, which he said talks about ‘equal work, equal pay.’
But he recommended that a team should be set up – headed by him and comprising of the district authority, school principle, county education officer and the students to engage the MOE in Monrovia and seek remedy to the long time problem.
“So we can meet the Ministry of Education and make them to understand that our brothers and sisters who have abandoned their comfort zones and decide to help this institution are not on payroll – that there’s no teacher,” the lawmaker told the angry students.
Rep. Browne termed the students action as ‘right’ because their action, according to him, ‘holds government’s feet to the fire’.
He also emphasized that the lack of teachers and instructional materials is a nationwide problem dogging the country’s educational system while referencing the situation to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s description of the system as a ‘mess’.
Although he said it was difficult for him to interfere to avoid his action being misconstrue by the public as political campaign ahead of the October’s election, he made a LD$80,000.00 to the volunteer teachers.