A top student in Jonglei state is urging parents to allow children to go to school.
“Please take your child back to school, learning is the good thing your child may be getting in the future,” said Roda Adhieu, a 16 year-old girl who completed her primary school studies in St. Andrew Primary School last year.
Roda told her parents to influence other elders of her community to request St. Andrew Cathedral Church in order for St. Andrew High School to be born in February 2016.
“Our problem as girls of South Sudanese people is that our parents are the ones who deny the rights of the girls, that girls have no rights to educate,” Adhieu said “Maybe we ladies, one of us will be a ruler of this Country next time.”
Adhieu is currently a senior at St. Andrew High School, and she says her parents support her decision to stay in school.
Meanwhile Nathaniel Aleer Chol, a 14 year old student of senior two who completed his primary school studies in Juba, told Radio Tamazuj that he is proud of being in a church based school.
Aleer said the teaching staff is stable and they conduct debates frequently, but said there is no laboratory for practical courses in their school.
“We lack laboratories for the school. (It) wants to make a computer lab, they brought the computers but the lab is still not started,” he said.
Aleer thanked their parents for keeping them in the school amidst disturbing economic situation in South Sudan.
The outlook of St. Andrew high school
St. Andrew high school, mudded with clay and iron sheet roofed, has only three classrooms, no fixed doors, and is located within the church premises. Most of the guest houses within the compound of St. Andrew church will be demolished in order to establish a permanent St. Andrew high school next year, according to one of the teachers.
Mabior Garang Bior, the principal of the school told Radio Tamazuj that the total number of students in senior one and two is 169. He said most of these students were the former pupils in their primary school and will be the ones to form a candidate class next year.
“This school was opened as per the request of the parents of these students, it was approved and the school was opened this year,” said Mabior adding that “At the beginning, we begin with two classes because we want to bring up the bright students that will shine allover South Sudan not those who are on the street where we can make form three or form four to sit for exams where we will produce any class of students but we want to produce high class students which are going to start in form two.”
St. Andrew high school was recently looking for new students to register and recruit them into their small number of existing students.