Upper Nile minister inspects textbooks in Juba
May 24, 2013 (JUBA) – Approximately 720,000 textbooks and teacher guides destined for primary schools and learning centres located across Upper Nile state have arrived in South Sudan’s capital, Juba.
Daniel Wuor Joak, Upper Nile state’s minister of education, science and technology, on Friday inspected around 30 containers of reading materials that are waiting to be transported to Malakal.
The books are funded by United Kingdom’s department for international development (DFID) and are an initiative of South Sudan’s ministry of general education and instruction.
A joint meeting was conducted on Friday with representatives of DFID, officials of Charles Kendal and Partners, the company tasked to distribute the reading materials and the managers of Speeding, the logistics company responsible for the transportation of the materials.
“Many of our schools don’t have suitable books and are in urgent need of the teaching materials”, minister Joak said at the meeting on Friday.
South Sudan has some of the worst literacy levels in the world, with the education system still recovering from years of civil war and neglect.
Many people accuse senior South Sudanese officials of sending their children abroad to study rather than focusing on improving the young country’s own education system.
Joak told officials from DFID and Charles Kendal and Partners that his ministry will restructure education in South Sudan, which became independent in July 2011.
In the future, he said, his ministry will focus on teacher training programmes and creating adequate facilities for schools.
The minister said he admired the quality of the books but warned that seasonal rains would make distributing the books difficult.
Minister Joak said his ministry will offer an assistance to keep the books safely in the state capital of Malakal before their transfer to the counties and payams [districts].
The minister took the opportunity to lobby DFID for assistance with teacher training programmes and the construction and renovation of school buildings in Upper Nile.
The textbooks are the first to have been written and designed by South Sudanese educationalists for South Sudanese children under the current national curriculum. A total of around 9.6 million books will be distributed across South Sudan.
(ST)
