By JAMES APA GUMUNO
Hagen Secondary in the Western Highlands province will start classes on Monday after five weeks of closure.
About 1,100 students who will be doing Grade 9 to Grade 12 this year spent five weeks doing nothing at the school.
Many concerned parents were very angry and threatened to refund their K1,200 school fees paid and send their kids to other schools in the province or elsewhere.
Interim principal John Mamb told NBC Eagle FM 91.5 last Wednesday night that the school faces shortage of English, mathematics, physics, chemistry and science teachers.
Mr Mamb said the school time-table has not been drawn up because of teacher shortage.
He said there are no formal classes and the head of curriculum had stepped down because he did not want to be blamed for an administrative matter causing delay.
Mr Mamb said he had raised the problem with the education authorities in the province who gave him the green light to look for specific teachers.
He said there are nowmore teachers for social science and business studies but the school is in dire need of English, mathematics, physics and chemistry teachers.
He said Grade 11 and Grade 12 students were badly affected.
Mr Mamb said a time -table for the classes would be drawn-up this weekend and by Monday, every student would be attending classes.
He said teachers would try their best to cover-up for the five weeks of classes missed but this would all depend on individual teachers because he could not force them to teach during weekends.
Mr Mamb urged parents and guardians to stay calm while he sorted out the matter.
He said it is just the beginning of the year and the students would still catch-up on the number of days they missed.
Meanwhile, a court battle between the provincial education board and Mr Mamb regarding the position of the principal remains pending in the National Court.
Early this month, the court issued an interim order for Mr Mamb to act on the position. The newly-appointed principal Paul Bangie was ordered to stay aside, while the substantive matter was pending and would be heard in Court starting next month.