The Primary School

The following blog post was written on the evening of the 16th July. Due to technological restrictions it was posted at a later date.

This morning we went to visit the local primary school, which is one of the nicer buildings in the area. The building of the school was funded by the Catholic Church, but the church does not have anything to do with the costs associated with running school. The money for the teachers comes from the federal government, which now provided primary school (1st-7th grade) for free. However, the number of students has increased and the number of teachers has not. Therefore, each grade has one teacher (except for 1st grades which has two teachers because there are 130 1st graders). All of the students spend the entire day with a single teacher in the same classroom. Class sizes range between 58-100 students this year.

Since it is winter break the students are not in session (they still have break in the winter because there is no heating in the school). However, the 7th grade students have to continue taking classes during their break because they are getting ready for the exit exam that will occur for them in October to determine if they will complete primary school and be ready for secondary school. There were 58 students in the 7th grade and we were allowed to visit their class and introduce ourselves. The students sang us a beautiful song and, I must admit, of our students were so well behaved I might not mind having 58 at a time.

One thing that is a little different from the U.S. is that the students in a classroom might range greatly in ages. For example, the 7th grade classroom we visited had students between the ages of 11-18. This is because some students might need to take time away from school to serve as a herdboy, they might be called to work to take care of their families, they might be orphaned and unable to pay for uniforms/books, or they might not have passed (we were told that most students repeat at least one grade).