BANU QUEEN MOTHER DONATES 1,000 EXERCISE BOOKS TO SCHOOLS TO BOOST EDUCATION IN THE PARAMOUNTCY
The Queen Mother (Ali Awuyigavei Maria) of the Banu Paramountcy has donated teaching and learning materials to some schools within the paramountcy to improve child education especially the girl-child.
The items which include exercise books, pencils, school uniforms, graph books, colour pencils and erasers were presented to Banu Basic School for distribution to seven basic schools within the paramountcy.
The Queen Mother who has been Queen Mother for 12 years and Paramount Queen for 10 years said the initiative is just the beginning.”We are just starting it and we are going to make sure we keep doing it even if it is not yearly but in 2 years it will create something important to improve the girl child education. We have a lot of students dropping out without reasons and others due to teenage pregnancy,” she said.
In all, she donated 1,000 copies of exercise books,uniforms to 30 students, etc distributed as, Banu – 350, Kunchugu – 150, Pina – 100, Wuru – 100, Basisan – 150 and Bico International- 50.
The Queen Mother also highlighted several challenges facing education in the area. According to her, schools are battling with few teachers – Banu Basic has only 10 teachers and one is likely to go back, lack of furniture for KG pupils and for teachers, lack of teachers’ accommodation, and the need for an ICT centre.At Basisan Basic, the challenges include lack of infrastructure for KG, poor maintenance of teachers’ bungalow, lack of Science and ICT equipment and lack of electricity.
At Kunchugu Basic, the challenges are lack of staff, poor maintenance and lack of education for the refugees in the community.Queen Mother is therefore appealing to the MCE to come to the aid of the paramountcy and help address these challenges.
The headteacher of Banu Basic School Kanton Pichere also expressed worry about refugee children roaming in the communities instead of being in school. He said the roaming of refugee children could pose a threat to society if not addressed.
He made a passionate appeal to the MCE and the MP to collaborate with the Refugee Board to encourage refugees in the various communities to attend school and take their education seriously.
He added that the low population in the schools is affecting them because when it comes to teacher-to-student ratio, the schools are denied teachers and furniture on grounds of low population, while refugee children who could add to the population are left roaming.
By Zulfa Lawie