It is a given fact that successful teaching and learning in school is partly influenced by availability of clean, quiet, safe, comfortable, and healthy environment.
Poor facilities in public schools on the other hand signify that students are not receiving their rights to have adequate and well-maintained school facilities, which also has an impact on student performance and teacher effectiveness.
It is too a fact that a comfortable and well ventilated classroom environment and controlled noise levels are crucial to efficient student performance.
One leading public primary school in Bungoma County is a complete contrast of what is stated above.
The DEB Primary School, situated in Bungoma town, Kanduyi constituency has a pupil population of 3,212.The school is preferred by most parents within and on the outskirts of Bungoma town due to its ideal location and good results posted in national examinations each year.
Each class from standard one to eight has four streams each accommodating between 95 and 100 plus pupils.
According to the head teacher, Tobias Khisa, the school urgently requires about Sh.25 million to build at least 30 extra classrooms to ease congestion.
The situation now is so dire that teachers hardly have any space in class to move around and they have positioned desks outside the classrooms where they check pupils’ books.
Khisa says due to the huge population the school also faces an acute teacher shortage and currently only has 60 TSC teachers against a requirement of 80 to cope.
Despite the challenges of space inadequacy and teacher shortage, the schools’ performance has been exemplary and discipline cases negligible.
In the 2018, KCPE examinations the school emerged among the top ten in the county, posting a mean of 310.
Twelve of its pupils joined national schools and more than 250 joined extra county schools. The school presented 404 candidates for last year’s exams.
Khisa says the school has the potential to perform even better with a boost in infrastructure and pleaded with the government and stakeholders to come to its aid before pupils report back next term.
By Roseland Lumwamu
