School Business

Last week was filled with meetings and visitations, productive and good in the ongoing rains of the season.   One of the meetings took place last Wednesday, when the education commission of the ELCSL called together the lead teachers of the 4 primary schools under the Lutheran umbrella.  This was the first time to convene such a meeting and we hope it will be an annual event.   The meeting provided an opportunity for reports from each school as well as an afternoon of training for the teachers.  Our goal was to begin to strengthen the relationship between the local schools and the ELCSL national office, and to identify ways to work better together in order to serve the children of Sierra Leone.

One of the biblical images painted on an interior wall of St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Romankneh. Love and concern for children was translated into action when the congregation started their own primary school for village children.

Two of the ELCSL schools are sustainable entities, in that they are “government assisted” (Calvary in Wellington, and Christ the King in Baw-Baw).  The other two schools (St. Peter’s Romankneh and St. John’s Ngolahun) receive no government support.   Government assisted schools are approved by the Ministry of Education so that the salaries of approved teachers are paid by the government.   In addition, government assisted schools should receive subsidies  for purchasing of educational materials and for maintaining school property.     St. Peter’s and St. John’s both seek to become government assisted schools in order to begin to pay their teachers a regular salary.  The process of approval for schools is a difficult one, requiring (as I’ve frequently heard) the school representatives to “go with something” whenever they visit the Ministry of Education offices.  “Going with something” means going with money — to say thanks, to encourage, to facilitate the process (otherwise known as paying a bribe).

At our meeting last week we learned that the government assisted schools had not received their financial subsidies in 2011, so the schools had not been able to purchase materials or undertake repairs.  In addition, teachers salaries for recent months have yet to be paid.   We also learned that most of the schools do not have copies of the government approved curricula.    At one level, the basic issues faced by these schools stem from lack of  resources; at another level, the challenges involved in providing quality education are systemic and a bit overwhelming.  I give great credit to the ELCLS pastors and and teachers for their vision and their commitment to starting schools and keeping them running against great odds.

Patrick Kabbah is a teacher and the chair of the ELCSL Commission for Education. He did some of the training at the recent workshop.

We have been celebrating a providential construction boom for the schools in recent months, with new buildings nearly completed for Calvary and St. Peter’s, and progress continuing in the remote village of Ngolahun.    All of this has been possible with support from a variety of sources:   the international NGO Action Aid, the Bombali District Council (local government), and the Willie Hunt family of Texas.    The school at Baw-Baw was built a number of years ago with funding from the Lutheran World Federation.  In addition, financial support from Holy Trinity Lutheran church in Pennsylvania has provided furniture for some of the classrooms and will also be used to purchase curriculum materials, blackboards, chalk and other essential items.  When I think about these school-related developments,  a variation of the African proverb rings true:  it does take a village — even the global village — to raise and educate a child.

The new building: St. Peter's Lutheran Primary School. A few finishing touches remain before school opens in September. The church very kindly served lunch on the school porch after worship last week, for my driver, the ELCSL Education Secretary, and me.