BY NCHIMUNYA MIYOBA
The Economic Front Party on the Copperbelt has called on Government to put in place measures that will reduce over crowding of pupils in public schools to avoid compromising quality education to the learners.
Economic Front party member of the central committee Fewdays Nsensema said the United Party for National Development UPND Government should quickly pay attention and provide solutions to the over crowding of pupils in classes in most schools.
Mr Nsensema said his party is worried that most public schools are congested and if left unchecked the situation is likely to compromise the quality of education in the country adding that this will also affect the teacher pupil ratio.
” The pictures and videos emerging showing most class rooms accommodating over 100 pupils sitting on the floor is very worrying and makes a sad reading . The situation is likely to compromise the quality of education, because teacher pupil ratio is unacceptable as well as sitting arrangements which makes teaching and learning more difficult,” he said.
Mr Nsensema said the congestion in schools has been necessitated by lack of planning of the free education policy by new dawn government and has since called on government to expedite the process of building more schools to sort out this problem.
He said his party is of the view that government through the Ministry of Education should scrap off examination fees for pupils in government and private schools as a way of making education accessible by everyone.
” We believe the new dawn Government didn’t plan well with free education policy. However, the govt needs to expedite and be consistent with the process of building of more schools to alleviate this problem. We also want to appeal to this govt to make education free as the name suggests by also considering scraping off GCE fees in order to attract more people to get back to school, because most of the pupils drop off from school for various reasons and fail to go back because of the fees,” he said
