Remote schools

‘My name is Nervis. I am in class 5 of GS Kimata. Our school has only one teacher, the head master. We are sitting six on a desk’.

‘I am the head master of GS Kimata, the lone government teacher of the school. The school is in somebody’s premises, under a hut of one classroom accommodating all classes. (…) Fowls and goats oftenly interrupt classes thereby causing ineffective teaching/learning process’.

Can you imagine a classroom in the Netherlands where teaching is disturbed because chicken or goats are entering the class? Or where you can’t be taught when it rains as the rain will just come in? Or where you have to share a bench with 5 other children? Or where there is no water, toilet or teacher?

The pupils of GS Kimata
in their school

All of this is happening in Government School Kimata, one of the schools I visited last week for the Remote Schools project Knowledge for Children wants to do with three partner organisations. The school is relatively well accessible, at least the car can reach and it is quite close to the main road. However, the school is in deep need.

They have one hut in which almost 250 children are taught. The lower classes face one side, the higher classes face the other side of the hut. But there is no wall or something to separate them, leading of course to a lot of distraction.

There are two teachers; the head teacher who is also responsible for all administration of the school and a lady who is a family member of the person who offered space on his compound to construct the hall. She is not trained as a teacher but should teach at least three classes at the same time.

The school has two very small blackboards (what doesn’t give them enough space to teach three classes), the benches are borrowed from a neighbouring school and of course there are no books or charts or other teaching materials.

The parents, the Fon (the local king) and the rest of the community are very committed, but they are also very poor. The community consists mainly of survivors of the Lake Nyos disaster in 1986. They are not allowed to go back to their ancestral villages. They make a living through farming, but all farming here is small scale and doesn’t enable them to make much money.

No matter how remote,
the flag should be on top!

As the school is a government school, there is no school fee. However, the Parents-Teachers Association (PTA) tries to collect money to pay the second teacher. As many parents have no means to contribute, the PTA is not able to do anything else in the school, like building a classroom. So that is why the children are in a hut.

As the attitude of parents, head teacher and the Fon is very positive, we hope to be able to really help this school. We plan to train the teachers, do income generating activities for the women to bring more money to the school, provide benches, books, materials, pay fees for very needy children and more. And in this special case, we will try to find a partner who can help them to construct a building.

We don’t want to do this only for GS Kimata. For us, this school might sound as a horrible exception, but there are many schools like this in that area. Some are not even accessible by motorbike. Therefore we hope that, with our partners Benekin, Rural Development Foundation and Afoni Children of Hope Foundation, we can do something for these remote schools to enable to pupils to get good education and be able to lead their communities out of poverty in the future!