• Pupils of Saabisi Primary School lack furniture
• They sit or lie on bare floors to have studies
•The MCE of the Kassena-Nankana Municipality has promised to provide pupils with enough furniture
Pupils of Saabisi Primary School at Natugnia in the Kassena-Nankana Municipality sit or lie on the floors of their classrooms to study as a result of lack of furniture, GhanaWeb’s Upper East correspondent, Senyalah Castro can report.
The school faces a serious challenge with desks, especially in the lower primary where there is not a single desk in classes 1, 2 and 3.
The situation is so bad that pupils are left with no choice other than to lie prostrate or sit on the floor when teachers walk into the classrooms to give lessons in order to be able to write in their books.
School authorities say the furniture problem is affecting teaching and learning, adding that teachers find it difficult to help the pupils to learn and train them on how to write in their exercise books.
Aside from the furniture deficit, the school’s lower primary block is in a deplorable state. The concrete floors of the classrooms are broken and its walls cracked. The defects have made the structure frail. The school also has a challenge with learning materials.
Moses Azabre, who teaches the class two pupils, said the situation was affecting the pupil’s ability to grasp lessons. He explained that what would take the pupils a short time to write in their books, took them the whole day.
He said the teachers are committed to their duties but the overwhelming challenges of the school are undermining their efforts.
“The major challenge here is the furniture, the classrooms, and the windows. The children find it difficult to write. Looking at the way they are sitting, even if you give them something to write, it will take them more than hours but they cannot finish.
These are pupils who have gone through KG to this level but they cannot even write. It's not that we are not teaching them, we are teaching them alright, we are following the order but the situation is bad,” Mr. Azabre lamented.
Mr. Azabre appealed to authorities to make the classrooms conducive, including fixing learning materials on the walls, to help improve the pupil’s understanding of subjects.
Headmaster of the school, Agemina Benjamin, said the furniture deficit was not the only challenge of the school. He spoke about the dilapidation of the school’s lower primary block which was constructed by the community, the lack of learning materials, and appealed to authorities to take urgent steps to maintain it.
He said the dilapidated structure did not guarantee their safety and there was a need for intervention from authorities.
“The challenges that we have here are the lack of furniture, the lack of learning materials, and the condition of the whole block. It is deplorable and we think that authorities should support us and when these are done, we won’t have any problems. We have a good number of staff”.
MCE visits school, assures to address challenges
Meanwhile, Chief Executive for the Kassena-Nankana Municipal Assembly, William Aduum, has assured to address the challenges facing the Saabisi primary school, starting with the furniture deficit.
The MCE, who gave the assurance when he paid a working visit to the school on Thursday, July 8, 2021, to familiarize himself with its challenges, assured to tackle the furniture deficit with the first batch of desks to be delivered next week.
Speaking to GhanaWeb's Senyalah Castro, Mr. Aduum said he was very much concerned about the plight of the school and was going to take immediate action to ensure that the pupils had the best environment to learn.
He said arrangements for bags of cement for the reconstruction of the damaged classroom floors will be made urgently.
Mr. Aduum, who did not expect the school to face such an acute shortage of furniture said an earlier disbursement of some 558 steel desks was made to the Municipal Education directorate for onward distribution to school. He however assured to make swift arrangements for furniture for the Saabisi primary.
Mr. Aduum urged headteachers not to hesitate to bring the difficulties they face at their schools to the attention of the Municipal Assembly for solutions whenever there was the need.
He said: "I am here on a fact-finding mission to Saabisi primary to get first-hand information to the challenges they are facing which have to do with one of their classroom blocks and the furniture situation. We have seen it for ourselves.
What we intend to do is to go back and see how best we can work on the floors and also make sure that we get the furniture and work on their building so that they will feel very comfortable learning. We will come back here within the next few days with the support we are able to get.”
“I’m very surprised that this school does not have even a single desk because just some two weeks ago, we gave the education directorate 548 steel desks. We received 180 desks from Common Fund and the Assembly procured 368 and we gave everything to the education directorate.
But that won’t stop us from doing the best we can to address the problem at this school,” Mr. Aduum added.
As at the time of filing this report, it was learnt that the Municipal Chief Executive was able to organize 20 pieces of steel desks to be dispatched to the Saabisi primary school.
This how the pupils sit on the floor in other to have studies in the Saabisi Primary School