The medium of communication in schools and in offices in The Gambia is English Language. Records had revealed that the general performance of our children in both written and spoken English in schools is far below standard.

Eight hundred and eight (880) contact hours devised by education experts seems futile to remedy the appalling conditions of English Language in schools. What is the possible solution to this mega problem in schools? 

This is a major concern which needs concerted efforts from all development partners inorder to mitigate this perennial and persistent academic menace. Schools are production plants where human beings are the raw materials and at the end of the process the products are distributed into the society for public consumption.
 The production overheads should not only be burnt by the public sector alone but as well as the private sector which are the major consumers of human labour.
Qcell had undoubtedly realized this and had made a better thought about this perennial academic menace in our society. The management of Qcell had also looked into the whole issue holistically and professionally as where to take off.
The approach to combat the problem must come from the smallest unit to the complex one. What then is the smallest unit of English Language one can use as a spring board? Alphabetical letters (Aa, Bb, and Cc etc).
The spelling competition approach introduced by Qcell Company is worth commending.  This competition according to Aminata Ceesay marketing manager Qcell is in two categories, Senior Secondary Schools and Upper Basic Schools.
“Each category is in three phases. Phase one competition is between various houses in individual senior secondary schools the house that comes first will represent the school at the regional level. At the end of the regional competition, two schools will qualify from region one and two respectively due to their sizes and region three, four, five and six will be represented by only one school making it a total of eight competing schools at the national level,” she says.
According to Qcell personnel, ten million dalasis (D10, 000,000) was budgeted for this competition alone. This is a huge amount to be spent on the right way.
 Such initiative is laudable and it is an indelible ink which will go a long way in achieving our educational goals particularly in improving the status quo of English Language in our Schools.
Many prizes are prepared for all competing students and schools ranging from computers, internet facilities, 3G mobile phones, scholarship to study computer at Quantum Institute of Technology amongst other valuable prizes.
Sifoe Senior Secondary School is the first senior school to host Qcell’s quiz competition in region two and the seventh school to host this on going nation wide competition. Green, Blue, Red and Yellow houses competed to the best of their abilities to spell words drawn across all the fields of studies.
 Red house came victorious followed by Yellow house. Red house will automatically represent Sifoe Senior Secondary School at the regional level later.
However, at the end of the exercise, the English department together with the Academic Board of the school had a meeting in analyzing the general performance of the students as well as their weak points. They realized that majority of the participants are weak in listening skills which must be sharpened and the problem of pronunciation was identified too. They commended the participants for a job well done.
Schools should continue to create such forum in order to help improve the standard of students to pave a way for better spoken and written English in schools.
880 contact hours cannot achieve anything when the problems of the students are not looked into and strategies crafted to solve them.
880 contact hours is a mare blue print which cannot measure the magnitude of students’ level of understanding and progress in schools.
Our purpose of being in schools is to teach, learn and understand what is being taught and learnt. There is no sense in covering a wide range of topics which are not understood by the students at the end of the day.
“More haste, less speed,” we should desist from this syndrome. Qcell needs to be applauded for introducing this great initiative.