“Madina Tunjang is a community where western education was not taken seriously. It was difficult for parents to allow their kids to attend school and retention was also a challenge. It was difficult to change their perception towards western education. However, after the introduction of the ZOOSC project, things changed gradually because we involve the community members and embarked on massive sensitisation within the community on the importance of education,” he said during a visit by ChildFund officials to the school.
The project funded by the EAC is jointly implemented by ChildFund, UNICEF, Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education and EFANET with the aim of enhancing quality education in school, boosting enrolment and retention.
“The project has made significant strides in the school. Inhabitants of Madina Tunjang were not conversant about western education. Therefore, enrolling their children was very difficult. However, the coming of the project motivated most of them to bring their kids to the school,” he said.
Jabbi added that: “If someone is struggling to put food on the table and thinking of buying books among others, it would be difficult for that person to send their kids to school. However, if this kind of funds are provided to parents, it will motivate them to send their kids to school because that will mean the financial burden has been reduced on them,” he stated.
“A challenge we still face is retention. Parents will enrol their children with the school but within five months, they start withdrawing them. We had over 300 pupils but at the moment we only have a little over 200 pupils. Sometimes, other parents will influence those that send their kids to school to withdraw them,” he stated, adding that the intervention of the ChildFund project has made the community aware.
Daddy Sowe, deputy head teacher of the school, underscored the significance of the project at the school, saying that: “Before the commencement of the project, we were trained as teacher coordinators to have knowledge on how to be able to work with community members. After our training, we organised two caravans at the village which were led by students of the school. This greatly helped us increase our enrolment.”
Momodou Jaiteh, head teacher for Bantunding Lower Basic School in the Wulli East District of the Upper River Region (URR), said: “The project is greatly helping us in our quest to achieve quality education in the school. However, we still encounter challenges in terms of retention. Some parents always withdraw their kids from the program. It is difficult to keep the students in the school if there is no food for them.” He added that they have facilities in the school to cater for the special needs pupils.
“We want to thank ChildFund - The Gambia and partners for providing us with bicycles. This has helped us greatly especially for students that are coming from far distances,” he added.
“These are some of the projects that we need at our schools because they enhance quality education in our school. After our campaign on the need for communities within the area to enrol their children, we had about 60 children who were brought in by their parents for enrolment. We even had special needs students at the school after our campaign,” he posited.
