Students sit for exam as head teacher calls for government support

Education

By TONY PALME
NEARLY 200 grade 8 students from St Anslem Primary School in Jiwaka sat their examination last week.
Headmaster Stephen Nagombi said the Catholic agency level 8 school was the largest in the whole of Jiwaka in terms of student population.
“This year we have 1439 students from grades 3-8,” he said.
“We had more than 200 grade 8 students in the beginning but some of them left school during the election so 196 sat for exams.
“Next year we expect an increase because we have five classes of grades three to six.
“We’ll have five grade seven classes and they’ll do grade eight in 2019. So we’ll have five grade eight classes in 2019 and we would have around 1,500 students in the school,.”
He was confident that the students had done their examination well and most would secure spaces in
grade nine at Fr Peter Secondary School at Fatima and other schools in Jiwaka.
Nagombi said that although the school was run by the church, it was an urban school located at the heart of Banz town and required government support as well to build more classrooms and teachers’ houses, and provide office equipment.
“The number of students is increasing every year because it is an urban school,” he said.
“We need to expand the school and recruit more teachers.
“That means more funding is needed from the local government apart from the little we get from the national government in piece meal arrangements.”
Nagombi said the school would end the academic year with its grade eight graduation on Dec 7.