Institution Survey (Kalingalinga Primary School).by Bwalya Bwalya | 21-11-2018 23:23 |
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Ensuring that children are healthy and are able to learn is an essential component of an effective education system. This is especially relevant to achievement of 'Education for All.' In order to derive maximum benefits children must be healthy. Therefore, programs that improve health can enhance learning and educational outcomes. However, just like in every institution, a school in this case is faced with diverse challenges by management in order to achieve set goals. The problems faced by Kalingalinga Primary School need both Educational and Environmental approaches to solve them. As environmental educators, we visited Kalingalinga Primary School where we had a privilege of interviewing the head of the school Mr Kaela Chisupa who highlighted a number of environmental issues faced by the management as well as the school att large. The school is known to be one of the most vulnerable in terms of infrastructure, sanitation and health in the central zone in Lusaka district compared to surrounding schools. The aim of this report is to show how team work is paramount in running a school. Everyone is involved in management of environment starting with senior most person who is the head, to junior most members of stuff which are the general workers. Pupils are the most important stakeholders and are taught among others how to keep their environment clean because learning is best done in a clean and conducive environment. All these can be achieved with implementation of relevant environmental and educational approaches. First and foremost, the school ensures that environmental information is disseminated to pupils during assemblies with emphasis especially from teachers on duty every week. The head teacher explained to us that parasitic infections due to unsafe drinking water were observed from pupils as well as members of staff. This was due to poor sanitation at school. Due to erratic water supply, stakeholders came on board and donated a 10 thousand litre water tank. Since then, the school has not experienced any problems regarding water supply. In the recent past, the school had dilapidated classrooms in terms of licking roofs and damaged floors. With the aid of a stakeholder, in this case Class Econ, the school was able to replace the licking roofing sheets and fix the classroom floors. In terms of waste management ,the school has adopted an efficient way of getting rid of generated waste. This has been achieved through a named dumpsite where waste is taken once it is collected. Furthermore, more toilets and litter bins have been put in place. We recommended that the school comes up with an environmental club so as to sensitize and educate children about environmental activities and responsibilities. Asides this, come up with environmental competitions to move children to stay ecocentric. Furthermore ,health inspectors ought to pay regular visits to schools to advise them on how best they can improve and maintain a clean, healthy and conducive environment. In conclusion, environmental education is extremely important in order to achieve environmental sustainability in every institution. In order for learning conditions to be conducive, everyone must be actively involved, most importantly, teachers must spearhead environmental education so that pupils are motivated to do the same. |
