During a meeting with the school board and teachers recently, over 2000 parents expressed concerns that the school, which has now been upgraded to junior high school status, lacked basic infrastructure such as a science laboratory, Home Economics classroom, Practical skills classrooms, and computer laboratory to cater for the new Grade 9 students.
The parents also raised concerns that their children attending Grade 9 classes for the first time this year have been without teachers for almost eight weeks, which has led to significant disruptions in their education.
The school board informed parents that the government is yet to provide the component of the tuition fee-free, and thus fundraising is necessary to raise about K250,000.
The board chairman, Derrick Rueben, also explained that the Teaching Services Commission (TSC) has yet to approve the secondary school structure positions based on the approval by the Secretary, Dr Uke Kombra.
Mr Rueben further stated that there are 86,000 approved funded positions on the current Education Department Master Register, of which 68,000 teachers are currently on the payroll, leaving about 20,000 funded positions vacant in the system that can be easily deployed to the New Erima Secondary establishment.
Mr Rueben also informed parents that the NCD district education board only approved for two classes, meaning that only 70 students will continue from the 278 children who have not been selected for the current secondary schools in the city. He claims that this decision is denying 208 children’s legal rights under the 3-6-6 Government Policy Legal framework.
New Erima Primary is one of the approved schools in NCD to start implementing the 3-6-6 structure commencing in 2021.
The school board has written to the Secretary in 2022, informing him that they have embarked on instilling their lower secondary infrastructure capacity, currently mainly funded by the Parents and Citizens (P&C).
They had anticipated the 2022 Project Fees reimbursement to complement the funding to complete this stage of their program to commence grade 9 class in 2023.
However, they are yet to receive the 2022 and 2023 project fees, which the government has continually announced as paid to the school accounts. As of 27th February 2023, nothing has been credited to the school account.
