The Permanent Secretary at the office of the SoS for Basic Education, has talked on manufactured holidays at an educational forum recently held at St. Therese’s Upper Basic School.

Baboucarr Boye, the Permanent Secretary for Basic Education, recently lamented on unofficial or manufactured holidays that have been hampering their 880 instructional hours.

In his introduction, Mam Tamsir Njie, working with the Regional Education office at Kanifing said, “St. Therese is a school others emulate.” He said their theme is “The lots of holidays we have during second term.”

According to Mr Boye, children are bound to lose valuable instructional hours if they do not report in time during reopening. He says, “The Education Department came up with a flexible calendar to ease the previous rigid calendar.” He said 880 instructional hours was stipulated, which is not part of the contact hour. He said schools could make up for lost days by way of extra classes. He said Gambia has an international average of instructional hours, whilst overseas countries have much higher instructional hours.

In addressing students, officials, parents and students, Zono Jammeh the principal of St. Therese Upper Basic School, said her school has a good history of academic excellence. It has also been good at discipline. We have compulsory extra classes to make up for the time lost through holidays, urging parents to be more involved in the life of their children at school. She said as school sports are coming up, principals should send children away that are in different uniforms at the stadium.

Zono Jammeh blamed parents for children’s stay at home when schools reopen, that they see their children dress shabbily only to come and be sent home. She also blamed the society and said a discipline child is grown at home, watered at the school and harvested by society.
 
Mrs. Jammeh urged parents to come and see their children at school and meet their class teachers. “Activities are very important, we therefore make up for the loss,” she added.

Mr Emil V. Kujabi, the Catholic Education Secretary, said they have a mechanism in place to let teachers come early to school. He says, “We have forms that the heads return signed by the teachers who come absent or are late. These are penalized accordingly. We have school managers who monitor and have our exams when schools reopen.” He asked parents to visit their children’s schools.

Mohamed K. Sabally, the head boy urged the school to prepare timetables in time. And Awa Jarjusey, the head girl, spoke on their goals and aspirations and urged parents to help.

Baboucarr Boye praised the Catholic Mission Education on strategies Mr Kujabi had put in place for teachers and asked government schools to emulate Mission teachers.

Mr. Conteh, the school’s Science teacher, demonstrated the point with these words: “united we stand and divided we fall with concrete materials”.