LAKE ZONE: Massive pupil turnout choke schools
Reports of 500 pupils per class raise eyebrows over the government’s preparedness when it announced the fee-free policy
What you need to know:
- In Geita District, facilities in schools do not match the huge numbers of children enrolled for Standard One, posing a serious challenge to pupils’ learning
Geita. Hundreds of pupils stare as the teacher struggles to maintain silence in a crammed classroom at Nyawilimilwa Primary School in Geita District. There are no chairs and desks for the pupils. Here, it’s a ‘luxury’ for the learners who seem miles away during class.
At least 500 pupils are in the class where only one teacher is expected to conduct a lesson and mark their books. Apparently, not much learning happens around here as the pupils seem to be engrossed in their things.
The school has been choked by huge numbers that enrolled after the introduction of free education early this year.
“I have never seen the flooding of pupils like this since I embarked on my teaching career,” says Mr Mawazo Mayunga, the school head teacher.
The school has a record of 2,052 pupils in Standard One this year up by nearly three times the 700 registered last year. For a school with 4,821 pupils, it’s a crisis that the community has, sadly, left to the school authorities to fix.
“Parents have said they are not making any contributions this time round because the government announced free education and said no one should be forced to contribute,” the head teacher tells The Citizen in an interview at the school.
A stopgap measure he has adopted does little to help the situation -- hot seating -- more classrooms are urgently needed. In the meantime, pupils attend lessons in four sessions. What time each takes, and what time the teachers will have to mark the books, are some of the tough questions the situation raises.
The school head says at least 1,496 desks will be needed to normalise the situation at the school. At the moment, only 343 are available against the nearly 5,000 pupils.
More than that, there is a major health issue -- the 5,000 plus pupils and their teachers share only 18 toilets -- meaning on average 280 of them share a toilet.
Parents used to contribute Sh10,000 each for desks and other development projects at the school. That’s not happening anymore. Any attempt at convincing them to volunteer is being met with hostile resistance. “Their argument is that the President introduced free education and no one is supposed to pay anything,” says the head.
But it’s not an isolated case.
Just a short distance from Nyawilimilwa, the situation is similar at Ludete Primary School, which has enrolled 2,000 children in Standard One. At another neighbouring school, Lutozo Primary, there are also over 2,000 pupils in Standard One.
The district, with 172 primary schools, has scored big in enrolment. “We are probably number one in the region. We have a total of 50,651 pupils in Standard One this,” says Deus Seif, the Geita District Primary Education Officer. But authorities say this same level of success may not reflect in the results later. The education officer says Sh305 million has been budgeted to buy desks.
