Deprived primary school in Komenda pleads for help

By Lisa Bogler

Komenda St Michael and All Angels Anglican Primary School is looking for land to set up classrooms for their soon to be JHS 1 students and pleads the government to work faster to help them. 

Godwin Fiagbedzi, headmaster

As travelers pass through Komenda, they come across a shabby looking building on the corner of a bumpy road. Children’s voices can be heard. In front of the building at a desk a man is sitting, writing something in a notebook. He is Godwin Fiagbedzi, headteacher of Komenda St Michael and All Angels Anglican Primary School, which is run in the said building. 

The school has been established by the Anglican church in 2005 and was then taken over by the government. However, nothing has changed since then. There are two classrooms of which one is split in three by two removable walls. The rest of the classes, about six of them, are taught in the courtyard, separated by the black boards which thus form the classrooms along the wall. When it rains, everybody has to move into the two roofed classrooms or the school has to be closed down, as the rain and sand blowing in the courtyard interferes with the teaching and learning activities.

Formerly, the building was used by the nearby sugar factory as a club house. Now, apart from being a school, it is also used as a community centre for entertainment and social activities, hosting for example weddings. It also contains a store. The school is therefore looking for land to set up new classrooms. They are especially under pressure to find a place for their form Primary 6. These students are the first bunch to continue to Junior High school level and if no place is found, they would have to leave St Michael and All Angels Anglican and move to other schools. 

As Godwin Fiagbedzi explained, the school is thinking about renting a shed for their soon to be class JHS 1. Even in that case, they would lack tables and chairs for the students. Furniture is a main problem of the school. The students are crammed together on the benches and the young ones share desks between five or six of them. Chairs, tables, cupboards and desks for the teachers are urgently needed. The removable walls, which separate the classes in the second classroom, easily fall when a wind is blowing. They break and have to be repaired or substituted. 

The school’s needs are obvious and it is hard to provide the children of the community with decent education under conditions like this. There is not enough space for the children, no equipment and even the weather is a restriction to the teaching and learning. This is not inviting for new school children and no incentive can be given to make children go to school and be educated. And this is even though it is education that can bring these children a brighter future.

The school is therefore pleading for the government’s help. They are appealing to the government to work on finding land for new classrooms faster so that the constructions can be started. Komenda St Michael and All Angels school needs support to keep their students coming and give them the education they need.