By NewsCritic Reporters
The Admin Headmistress of Community Primary School, Nkwoachara, Mrs Emea Love Okpan, has said that lack of teaching staff is hindering the academic activities in the school, adding that she has only one teacher presently.
Following the controversies that dogged the report that Community Primary School Nkwoachara, Isingwu, is suffering due to unavailability of teaching staff, the NewsCritic online crew visited the school to get first hand information regarding the status of the primary school.
On arrival the team was received by the Headmistress, Mrs Okpan who lamented the situation the school has found itself due to lack of teaching staff. She said that if the school can get only four additional teachers, that she will be able to manage it, instead of the present state where only one teacher is available thereby making her go the extra mile in order to meet the academic needs of the pupils.
Mrs Okpan disclosed that when she got transferred to the school in 2019 the students’ enrolment figure was 19 and the school was without any facilities with dilapidated classrooms block without chairs or lockers for pupils and toilet facilities non-existent.
She noted that today the school has students’ enrolment of 43 pupils with only one teacher, Mrs Onogbuo Victoria Chinalu from Mgbaja, and herself the Headmistress. According to her, the school came to this point when two teachers went for upload to secondary school since 2021 and no replacement has been made by the Education Authority since then.
The Headmistress pointed out that each class 1-6 is supposed to have a teacher but due to the lack of teachers, the school now merge three classes into one. She explained that the time the teachers were uploaded the school was asked to submit its nominal roll to the local government which she did, adding that since then nothing has happened.
“The lack of teachers is affecting us seriously here, for instance I’m supposed to attend the meeting of Association of School Heads at School Road, but couldn’t go because of the situation”.
On her part, the only teacher in the school, Mrs Onogbuo Victoria Chinalu told NewsCritic that since the past two years, she has been handling three classes the Basic 3, 4, 5 respectively, which to her is not good because the schemes are different. “So, it’s not good to combine the students, she said. The Headmistress handles Basic 1,2, 3; this newspaper was informed.
