IT looks like every year around this time, our country goes through anxiety over the state of our schools, given the impending new school year. This time around, however, the situation has reached scandalous proportions and the sad thing about it is that so few people seem to care.
We are not in the habit of stirring public emotions on issues, but we believe that the state of our schools at this time deserves a national outcry, if only to show the authorities the level of disgust that the people of this country feel towards what is going on.
Last Tuesday we published pictures of sections of the Soufriere Comprehensive Secondary School with several classroom doors missing and broken windows. Elsewhere, our reporter told the story of broken toilets, smashed windows, sagging doors, wrecked furniture, mould, leaky roofs, termites, woodworms, student vandalism and general official neglect.
Our flagship institution, the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, is one of the worst-off, requiring the relocation of three whole divisions, Agriculture, Health Sciences and Teacher. In addition, the Hospitality section, charged with training youngsters to take their places in the vital tourist industry, was infested with rats and other pets, not to mention other issues. Yet, we are told that this is only part of the story of deterioration and neglect that has been allowed to fester at the College which we talk about upgrading to university status.
The College’s Vieux Fort campus has by no means been left out of this pattern of neglect and has concerns of its own.
Exactly how did we come to this? Someone must be made to provide answers. Building education plant does not come cheap and once built, one expects that buildings will be maintained at a level that would guarantee comfortable occupation. But we find our schools are now sources of all kinds of discomfort and sickness and that some students were made to endure these conditions for years.
So what went wrong with our education system? Was anyone monitoring conditions that were clearly deteriorating before their eyes? Was the Ministry of Education aware? Was the Minister? Was the Ministry of Infrastructure which we are told had responsibility for repairing schools? Was that Minister? Or is this a case where everyone with oversight of the school plant slept on the job?
So we have gone to the Caribbean Development Bank to borrow $3 million to fix Sir Arthur and presumably, the government will, from its scarce resources, have to come up with more funds to return the other schools to a state of fitness so that children can occupy them with some degree of comfort.
Sadly, no one will be made to account for this national disgrace and we will endure the shame that goes along with it as though nothing has happened. This country that spends so much money on senseless projects, including public buildings that remain unoccupied for several months after they have been constructed, cannot ensure that there are proper facilities for the education of its children.
We are simply aghast at this situation. If this 10-week old government is serious about governance, it will spend some effort making enquiries to let us all know how it is that we got to this shameful stage.
The matter of student vandalism is equally worrying and needs to be attended to. Schools are built, equipped and maintained at tremendous cost and the fact that destruction of school property by students continues is another facet of the culture of neglect because it appears that they do so with impunity.
There has been a serious dereliction of duty in the education system that has set us all seriously backwards.