Parents of the pupils at the Local Education Authority (LEA) Primary School in Jijimgba, a community in Kuje Area Council of the FCT have started withdrawing their wards from the school over lack of teachers and dilapidated classrooms.
The parents particularly lamented the situation where their children sit on the bare floor to take lessons and the teachers sit on the window as a result of the lack of desks and chairs.
The parents, who spoke when Abuja Metro visited the community on Saturday, said the one block of three classrooms, which was built through the community’s efforts over 18 years ago, were in a dilapidated stage.
They said the classrooms, which were built with mud blocks, are being maintained by the community but now in a terrible condition.
Chairman of the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) of the school, Mr Danjuma Enoch Bako, who conducted our reporter round the building, said the school also lacked desks and chairs.
He said the dilapidated state of the classrooms had been affecting learning, especially for pupils from primary 1 to 3, saying they are now being combined in one room for lessons.
He said, “The situation is worse during the rainy season because pupils in primary 1 to 3 are usually combined with those in primary 4 for lessons. Despite this, the classroom often flooded whenever it rains.’’
Bako said the only classrooms that pupils manage to take lessons in were those of primary 4,5 and 6 even as he said that the roof of the primary 5 block had also been blown off by wind.
He said,” Most of the classes have no desks and chairs for both pupils and teachers to sit with teachers sitting on top of windows during the lessons.”
A class teacher, who is a native of the community, Silas Alkali, who also spoke with our reporter, said there had not been enough teachers to handle core subjects in the school.
He added that despite the school having a population of over 161 pupils, there have not been enough desks and chairs for both the pupils and the teachers to sit on.
He said, ‘’To make it worse, there are not enough teachers and even the one we have, some of them don’t come to school apart from me, who happens to be from this community.”
He appealed to the Local Education Authority (LEA) of the council to post more teachers to the school, even as he said some of the teachers posted often ended up seeking for transfer due to insecurity in the rural community.
An official of the LEA Kuje, who didn’t want her name mentioned, told our reporter that the situation had been presented to the council chairman for action.
