Opposition Leader calls for better management of hinterland secondary schools

Opposition Leader Brigadier David Granger has called for an immediate, independent investigation into the administration of hinterland secondary schools, especially those with dormitories. The call came in the wake of recent reports of misconduct by teachers and students and of dangerous mismanagement by the Ministry of Education.

Granger pointed out that severe and chronic administrative problems have hampered education of the students in many regions. About 2,500 students currently live in state-run dormitories throughout the country – from Hosororo in the Barima-Waini Region to Aishalton in the Rupununi Region. There has been scant remedial action on the problems over the years and there seems to have been no significant improvement in the management of the dormitories.

Parents from Ituni only this week staged a protest over the poor conditions at the Kwakwani and Linden Foundation secondary schools’ hostels that house their children who, they said, have been victims of physical violence and sexual abuse. A teenager, in one case, returned pregnant to her home community. This week, also, members of the Parent Teacher’s Association and residents of Port Kaituma protested against the “deplorable” conditions at the community primary school, calling on the administration to repair the unsatisfactory toilets in the compound.

The deaths of several students, which have not been satisfactorily explained or investigated, have been most distressing. It was recalled that three pre-teen girls perished in a fire which destroyed the female dormitory of the Waramadong Secondary School in September 2008.  The male dormitory and a library of the Bartica Secondary School were destroyed by fire in December 2007.

A 13-year-old student of the Charity Secondary School was found hanging in the washroom of the school’s dormitory in an ‘apparent suicide’. A 15-year-old girl of Saint Ignatius Secondary School was found hanging from a Juniper tree in September and, in November last year, the decomposing bodies of three students from the Aishalton Secondary School, were dug out from an abandoned mining pit, one week after they were reported missing.  Reports of sexual molestation of students by two teachers of the same school had been investigated only two months earlier.

Health and nutrition have suffered.  Officials at the Port Kaituma Secondary School were forced to send home the children who use the dormitory because of a lack of food in March 2010. Eleven children from the Three-Mile Secondary School dormitory were rushed to the Bartica hospital suffering from bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea believed to be as a result of contaminated water in September 2009.

Drug abuse has been another problem. A former Minister within the Ministry of Education, acknowledged the use of marijuana at the Waramadong Secondary school, explaining that “the use of marijuana in schools is prevalent in almost every region.”

Brigadier Granger warned that, as the 10^th Parliament starts it work after 19 years of PPPC administration, the Opposition will have no tolerance for the sloppy management of the nation’s hinterland schools. He insisted that the time has come to improve the conditions in hinterland schools in order to protect our nation’s children from abuse.