As South Sudanese, our educational goal is to develop the personality of our children to the point where they are aware of their responsibility to other human beings. The attitudes of our school-age children are shaped to some degree by the structures or facilities through which they are mediated. In fact, such construction conditions at Liggi Elementary School can directly affect children’s attitudes or the attitudes of teachers and parents, which in turn affects children’s academic performance. Children naturally feel better about themselves when their surroundings are pleasant, of which the miserable Liggi children are not even close. This is one of the many challenges facing the Liggi community today.
As I speak today, Liggi Elementary School may face the combined challenges of deteriorating conditions and rapidly declining enrollment. These combined deficiencies will effectively affect the quality of teaching and learning and contribute to health and safety issues for staff and children. Once again, school building and facility conditions have been associated with teacher motivation and student achievement. My concern here is that the Ministry of Education should develop a national Center for the assessment of school buildings and site conditions rather than wait until the buildings collapse, which “could endanger the lives of children, as they are the future of this nation,” as Yei Commissioner Juma David said. If it’s available, then you’re not implementing your roles. The National Center for Educational Statistics, in its mandate is to provide any information on the conditions of schools, including construction infrastructure.
Unfortunately, the closed JRS let down the Liggi community after all they required without any explanation. Deteriorating environmental conditions, such as those seen in the photos, can affect learning as well as the health and morale of staff and students. Typically, students’ standardized achievement scores may be lower in schools with poor construction conditions. Lower performance can also be associated with factors specific to the condition of the building, such as classrooms, furniture, and more.
In dilapidated buildings, the atmosphere can easily be more marked by despair and frustration; these are the typical backdrop for teaching and learning at Liggi Primary.
When there are problems with working conditions, they are serious enough to affect the work of teachers; they can result in increased absenteeism, reduced levels of effort and effectiveness in the classroom, lower morale, and reduced job satisfaction.
As I observed one day, Liggi Primary is an overcrowded school. This is a serious problem in many schools in Yei County, particularly in the inner city, where space for new construction is at a premium and funds for such construction are limited. As a result, pupils and students find themselves trying to learn while stuck in spaces that were never intended as classrooms. Although research on the relationship between overcrowding and student learning has been limited, there is some evidence, particularly in schools like Liggi Primary, that overcrowding can have an adverse impact on learning.
The crowded conditions in Liggi’s classrooms not only make it difficult for students to concentrate on their lessons, but inevitably limit the amount of time teachers can devote to innovative teaching methods such as cooperative learning and group work or, in fact, to teach anything beyond the bare minimum of material required. Also, because teachers must constantly struggle simply to maintain order in an overcrowded classroom, the likelihood that they will burn out sooner than otherwise would be the case.
The construction of Liggi Elementary School will have an impact on teaching/learning, it will lead teachers and students to feel a renewed sense of hope, of commitment, the belief that they care about them.