Claudiana Cole, minister of Basic and Secondary Education said the government intends to replace the tuition fees with grants to all students in the country.
Answering questions at the National Assembly raised by Halifa Sallah, member for Serrekunda, Ms Cole said her ministry has introduced a free education policy through the Schools Improvement Grant by eliminating tuition fees and other levies that were barriers to access to education in the country. She said the grants cover most of the basic needs of students excluding uniforms, note books and dinner money.
“Following the success of the pilot project, the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education has now scaled up the programme to cover all public lower basic schools in the country,” she said.
Further answering questions from Sidia Jatta, member for Wuli, Ms Cole said her ministry has expanded the teaching of local languages in public schools.
She added: “We are implementing seven national languages to support the development of reading skills of children in early grades from early childhood to Grade 3. However there are challenges in the implementation of the project in some schools in Region Six, where there are inadequate numbers of Sarahule teachers forcing the ministry to rely on teachers who are not well versed in the language.
“We then trained them on the orthography and methodology. Similarly, the same situation prevailed in Foni regarding the teaching of Jola. We do a lot of training and coaching to support these teachers.”
Our overall educational goal should consist of a comprehensive national education plan with significant focus on early childhood education and development. The ministry should seek advice and suggestions from leaders and experts in the field, with relevant comments from parents and other stakeholders. A policy paper should be written and circulated before specific recommendations are adopted.
We the citizens desire free education, as it should be, it is our rights, now it is left to our civil servants to tell us the best way to accomplish our educational aspirations and how to pay for it.
Standard practice is that questions are before hand gathered from the National Assembly members and submitted to a particular minister to avail him/her the opportunity to prepare answers to the concerns of the peoples representatives. What we have been witnessing from the cabinet ministers so far is one poor performance after the other with regards to the depth and width of their answers. The exceptions are few and far in between.
__________________________________________________
Claudia Cole has to contend with some tough questions from PDOIS house members. Even though her responses lack material weight, I will give her a B- for her grace and candor.
___________________________________________________
Free education is not free, someone somewhere has to shoulder the costs of educating our young people. Grants are said to be used to cater for this. My question is:
How long can the grants in question sustain that project? A vital question to answer to avoid falling back into a cycle of having a two-tier eduction system, one for the rich and one for the poor, i.e. private schools and public schools. We need answers. Can one journalist from JollofNews take that up with the relevant authorities? If they will be worth their salt.
___________________________________________________
Teaching our children exclusively in their mother tongues in school up to third grade and then switching to a foreign white language is an insult. It’s no better than demarcating spaces for black people to dwell in and not to wander beyond those lines. The excuses I’ve heard from the corridors of power is that the government does not currently have both the financial and and Human Resources to undertake a complete reorientation of the medium of instruction from English to our beautiful and phenomenal languages. That’s an excuse that is best suited for the dumpster. If we have the resources to teach our children and youth in a language that is suppose to mentally enslave them and make them dump, why can’t we employ the same resources to the pursuit of self realization in education.
__________________________________________________
Educating us entirely in the language(s) of the savages is a crime on our right to exist and live in our OWN realities as it is. The bourgeoise don’t care about that because imperial languages are their major instruments of oppression, subjugation and blatant thievery.
____________________________________________________
Orthography is the least of considerations to attaining language and cultural freedom. When we can’t speak our languages in the NA, we are not allowed to speak our languages in the courtrooms, when we are not allowed to speak our language in the offices, the banks, and other public spaces, you are disempowering those languages to be media of discourse. This is the post colonial reality of accidental Afrikkan nations carved out of a united landmass to serve the interests of Europe, Amerikkka and Asia.
_________________________________________________
This system is not maintained because of resource constrains, it’s maintained for the convenience of an “educated“ elite class to continue the work of the devil for him.
Wise Up, My People! Rise Up!
________________________________________________
Yours in the service of The Gambia and the Black Nation, I remain.
There should be no child left behind policy for Education.
Tafel what does “no child left behind” entail with regards to access, quality and affordability for you?
Kindly accept my sincere greetings.
No child left behind, that means every child can have access to education, so there should not be any excuses unless their circumstances are beyond comprehensible.
Tafel thank you very much for your response.
The Gambia as a nation was born in 1889 and became a republic in 1970.
1970 to 2018 is 48 years. That’s two years shy of half a century.
In this half century, the nation state of Gambia could only make education accessible to 30% of the population. Now we are only talking about access.
If we are to assess quality, affordability and applicability, the situation looks even more depressing.
Add to that, that we “educate” our children and they go on to perish in the Mediterranean Sea or fill up asylum camps in Europe for lack of perspectives and opportunities in their motherland.
Tafel back to you once again.
What do we need to recalibrate to give ALL our children not just access to education but quality, affordable and an applicable education?
Mwalimu; I understand your point, but this is just a beginning and we should let the new system kick in, then all that quality and affordability you are talking about will come along. Even a motor vehicle has up to three gears before it reaches to top speed. So let’s embrace the starting then later.
Tafel,
I really don’t know what to embrace. If what you mean is to “give them a chance”, the government of Adama has already failed us on multiple fronts and on multiple occasions. Our only respite will come from Adama stepping down after the agreed three years transition period.
Reforming our education system can still go on without this government in power.
What we need is a National Language that meets the requirements of our (modern, scientific) age, which every Gambian can speak and understand.
This language would then become the official language and medium of instructions in our schools.
Learning additional language(s), like Mandinka, Pularr, Wollof, etc could either be mandatory or optional, depending on needs.
We must move away from half hearted attempts or dependence on foreign languages, if we want to impart meaningful education and knowledge that is applicable in our children.
Bax,
I wonder why your voice and mine seem to be the only ones advocating for our languages to be used as vehicles to gaining education and knowledge on this medium. Oh! Gambiano’s is also one of such a voice. I guess the majority of the people around also assume foreign languages like French, English, Arabic and all what not are superior to our languages. That is far from the truth though.
Unfortunately, continuing to learn and teach in those languages is depriving a whole nation of 75% of its cognitive intellectual capacity.
Our people though seem to be blind to this reality.
Come together my people, come together to save the future generation from all the woes that presently bedevil us.