The Injustice At Play In School Boards

Wherever there is low quality education automatically that becomes a sign of deficiency in development. Countries all over the world had taken a center stage in improving quality and making education affordable to all the people, thus Gambia is not an exception to this.  Countries  are improving more and more on their education system every moment of time in order to avert the continuing absolute control of the world economy by few countries.                                                                                                                                        Gambia government had contributed immensely in bridging the educational gaps left opened since pre-independence about four hundred and so years back. Under the able leadership of President Yaya Jammeh who had not only made education accessable but also affordable to all.However  quality is what makes the disparity and our experts in the education sector had come up with indicators that might have been the major setback of our quality education·

It had been realised that since the inception of the University of the Gambia  some years back, so many of our competent trained qualify teachers were lost to other disciplines of work which gave the  Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MOBSE) different thoughts to respond rapidly to such a great menace to the development of our beloved motherland.                                MOBSE in collaboration with Gambia government through Personnel Management Office (PMO) had come up with different incentive schemes to revitalise the lost glory (quality education).

Among the scheme is  retention allowance for teachers , to encourage them stay in the profession. Another was to retain and to maintain its graduates in the system by paying them a “graduate allowance”. The later had paid dividend as less teacher are now leaving the profession.

MOBSE and PMO deemed it necessary to pay such graduate allowance to all those who are legible and insist that all  must benefit from such special allowance. Denial of paying legible teachers of such allowances tantamount to  insubordination of executive order.

  Some principals in board schools over the years are back peddling the good work of the government by denying their graduate teachers this entitlement, which is the graduate allowances.

Sources reaching Education In depth revealed that in one of the meetings of the so called conference of principals, that apart from the principal and the vice, all other graduates in their various schools should not benefit from the graduate allowance due to insufficient fund .

If MOBSE was aware that the subventions they give to schools were not adequate to cater for all the graduate teachers they would not have informed the graduate teachers about the entitlement. Our doubt here is that if the funds were not enough why did the principals considered themselves first instead of those who do the most labourious works? 

Recently some graduate teachers from Sifoe Senior School, who had applied for the allowance from Gambia government through MOBSE, were asked to liaise with their school for the payment of such allowance  as a board school or else they may be posted to another school where they may apply to benefit from such an allowance.  Consequently, five out of the seven Gambian graduates in the school wrote a join letter to the principal to express their dissatisfaction and are seriously looking into the possibility of moving  to another school where such allowances will be paid to them.The Principal  is yet to invite those teachers for any bilateral discussions concerning their welfare in the school.

Education In-depth   had come to the conclusion that the principals’ idea or decision of not paying graduate allowance to other graduate teachers under the board schools must have been empowered by the MOBSE and Gambia Teachers Union (GTU). This is sure because there cannot be any meeting of conference of principals without sending an invitation to the ministry and GTU. If principals should raise such ideas in such meetings, we assumed that they should be condemned outright by representatives of both MOBSE and GTU.

The country had attained accessed and reliable education but the quality is yet to be met. The means to meet the quality education target is to standardise the education system from the grass root by coming up means of board schools to pay graduate teachers for all allowances that Gambia government created. The ministry should intervene as soon as possible to level the playing field for all players. In as much as they want to keep playing the game,, they must obey the rules of the game.

For GTU, the president is the principal of Muslim Senior School. He has two caps on and is aware of the appalling financial conditions of teachers. Most of those graduate teachers had gone through their university education without sponsorship, the little they had saved all when to the university tuition fees whiles  some still owe university and could not access their certificate due to such arrears. Remember that it is through teachers sweats that GTU is running and you are all giving a  blind eye and deaf ears to problem you should solve.

Every month GTU collects fifty dalasi (D50) from teachers for the up-keeping of that office yet such an injustice is happening in schools and you fail to take steps in the right direction. Such things need to be properly handled amicably as soon as possible to sharpen union members trust and confidence in you

There is lot of hypocrisy behind such a draconian decision of those pot belly greedy supercilious principals.  We had censured this from so many dimensions to gage the: fairness, concern,  goal oriented and the effectiveness and efficiency of those principals whose attitudes are scaring away the few  graduate teachers which can only yield us nothing but rather schools full of foreign teachers who are economic migrant  and would only care about how much they receive at the end of the month but not how our children are progressing with their education. Most of those foreign teachers often address our school children as stupid, indiscipline and so on when, however those foreign teachers  are sent to those schools to change those children they refer to  as stupid heads to intelligent ones,

After few years operating as senior schools, those principals would write to go under board. To under board for what?To access more money for their families and for themselves at the detriment of others? If they are sure that funds are not enough why do they still cling on to stay under board?

We had been informed that school like Armitage pays graduate allowance if  that is so, why not others? Graduates teachers particularly those under board schools who do not care about their graduate teachers had expressed their concerns over this matter which is barbaric, unfair, discriminatory, deceiving, discouraging, demotivating, malicious and its a professional misconduct.

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