With the 2024/2025 academic year having only commenced on September 9th, 2024, it is still too premature to determine what the total enrolment of Primary, Junior Secondary and Senior Secondary students and Nursery children will be because some parents, many of whom who barely survive on daily earnings, are still preparing to send their children to school.
There are many situations where the parents have not yet been able to obtain the necessary school materials or pay the required school fees – only Primary education is subsidised by the government of Sierra Leone – but, to date, the Nursery, Primary, Junior Secondary, and Senior Secondary schools’ management team have enrolled 250 pupils.
All Lifeline Nursery and Primary school teachers attended the recent training course, conducted by Olusola Kemi Oluwadunmininu, Sierra Leone National Director for Jolly Phonics, a fun and child-centered approach to teaching literacy through synthetic phonics, involving actions for each of the forty-two letter sounds – a multi-sensory method which has proven to be very motivating for children.
All the attendees appreciated the efforts of Prince Tommy Williams, Lifeline’s CEO, Mrs Olusola for the timeliness of the training, upgrading the teaching skills and knowledge of the teachers, at the start of this new academic year, but also for the supply early learning materials distributed to the teachers to help and support their early learners.
Two other points of note:
~ on September 14th, GOAL Sierra Leone conducted a training session for the senior Lifeline teachers on Gender-Based Violence.
~ the schools’ management team, together with the pupils and their parents, are still wating for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results which may now be released next month.