TORORO – World Vision, a faith-based organisation, on Friday donated learning and teaching aid materials to over 17 government-aided primary schools in Tororo District as part of its efforts to improve academic standards.
Among the donated learning and teaching materials were; teachers guide and textbooks.
While handing over the materials to the benefiting school, the secretary for production in the district Mr. Francis Olweny thanked
World Vision for extending the support to the schools and challenged the teachers to use the donated materials as tools to fight ignorance among the learners.
He urged headteachers to make sure that the donated learning aid is made available to the learners to help them improve on their ability to read and write.
Mr. Olweny appealed to the inspectorate department to scale up inspection to ascertain whether the books are put to proper use to avoid scenarios where they are only kept in the school shelves as it has always happened to the literature that government distributed to schools.
The benefiting 12 primary schools in Paya Sub-County and 5 primary schools in Sop Sop Sub-County were among the sub-counties with the worst performers in the recently released Primary Leaving Examinations Mock examinations by the district where Sop Sop was rated the worst Sub-County and Paya rated second last sub-counties that had the highest failure rates.
He added that now that the schools have been aided, there shouldn’t be any excuse for the same schools to continue failing children when they have all is needed to spur teaching and learning in their schools.
Joseph Ecidu the World Vision Tororo programmes manager said the donated items are focused at increasing the numeracy and literacy levels of learners especially in upper primary levels.
He said the donation was guided by the study conducted by the organisation that found out that whereas the organization has addressed the challenges of inadequate classrooms, desks and sanitary facilities, some schools lacked teaching aides which are very vital in building the foundation of learners.
The handover was witnessed by the Senior Education Officer, Christine Akongo, Vicky Aloo Oguti from the office of the Chief Administrative Officer and Silver Oketcho Soye the LC3 chairperson Paya Sub-County who all hailed the NGO for aiding schools with learning and teaching materials.
