Ngorr Ciise wrote:

"See, this is the point: there were, to be sure, numerous problems with education under the PPP. Yet, despite their appalling record in improving the country’s educational infrastructure, and the APRC’s “school projects,” education was relatively cheaper and more affordable under the PPP than under the APRC. Why? In real terms, Gambians were economically better off under the PPP than they currently are under the APRC. This is why exam fees was virtually a non-existent or, in extreme, a peripheral problem in deterring people from finishing basic education without a school leaving
certificate. That is to say because people were relatively well-off – economically – under the PPP, the current problems being encountered in financing basic components of education like exams fees for final exams was virtually non-existent or on the periphery. That is the nuance of my key argument."

Ngorr, I also realised that the above is your key arguement, that's why I have decided to ignore the rest of the gibberish that preceded it. Let me tell you that what you are trying to sell here would not be bought by me. Fact of the matter is that, under the PPP, education for all was never in their vocabulary, plain and simple. The whole charade was just a plain scam whereby ALL taxpayers' monies were used for the education of the mainly privileged urban few at the detriment of the mainly rural poor. They created a sham scheme whereby over 50,000 kids are made to sit to an exam every year only for less than 4,000 to be selected to proceed beyond primary/grade six (5). And guess what, the selection was not even based on merit in the true sense of the word. Rather, it was based on the available places they created and maintained over the years. You see by this method, all you have to do is peg the pass mark that ensured that the over 45,000 kids that sat to the grade 6 exams are simply told that they had failed and should either repeat or quit. You see how the advisers of the PPP government and the various ministers of education have been robbing our poor people who happen to come mainly from the rural areas. In other words, year in, year out the families of over 45,000 children are made to pay for and sit to a selection exam that guranteed that they would be told they where not good enough to proceed because there were simply no places. How else can you explain the failure of a government to build a single high school in thirty (30) years, while lording it over a population that grew from less than 300,000 to over 1,000,000? Are some of you fro real?

Another scam that was also widely practised at time was to ask the students to choose which schools they prefered before sitting to the grade 6 daylight robbery, De-selection exams. When the results of these bogus exams come out you can bet your bottom Dollar that over 90% would be told they had failed. This they would do subtly by the government announcing a cut-off mark that ensured that only those who attained marks that would fit the available places only. Anybody who scores any mark that would tend to put a strain on the available places, is simply told he/she was not good enough.

The second level thievery comes into play when school Principals announce that due to too many students choosing their schools they had no choice but to raise their individual cut-off marks, say by another 35 points. From this stage onwards, it is a case of how much you are willing or able to part with or who you know. This is the absolute plain fact and there is no running away from it. 

One of the negative effects of this daylight robbery had been to exclude the girl-child from the education system, particularly girls from the rural areas. Who, in his/her right mind, could convince a poor rural farmer that educating his girl-child would eventually pay more dividends than marry her off aged 13? This encouraged parents to marry off their children at early ages while continuing to porduce more and more babies? This encouraged treating young girls as commodities and not as individuals who may after all have something far better to contribute towards national development than simply satisfying someone's lust. You see Ngorr, under the previous PPP regime very few girls, particularly rural girls made it beyond grade 6 because while boys had the time play and study, the girls had to help in the home. This left them with very little time for any meaningful studies; and guess what even when they had time for studies, they were too damn exhausted and had a lot of other things to worry to about. Some of these worries included how to say No to a teacher or headmaster who keeps telling you that the easiest way to make it is to give in.

Finally, with newspapers virtually non-existent, no TV, the national radio non-existent, who would know about anyone not being able to pay for exams fees? I would therefore continue to maintain that instead of trying to make a mountain out of a minuscle case of some 53 people not sitting to their grade 9 exams due to not paying their exam fees, concentrate on the efforts being put into the education sector. But I guess this is to expect too much. If some of you had any degree of honesty in them, then you would not even contemplate comparing the record of the former PPP government and that of the APRC in terms of investing in the education of all Gambian children and not only a privileged few.

Sanusi,

There is no doubt in my mind that you know for a fact that when you select only the top 1,000 students from a potential 50,000 kids to make it to high school and five years later, select from this 1,000 high school kids only 50 and send these people to university, the result you expect to get from them would be different what prevails now. It is said that the surest way to miss an opportunity is never to have had it in the first place. Time and again, we ahve witnessed how people who were de-selected from the school system because they "FAILED" their common entrance came back through perseverance and grit to make it later in academia. I, for one, can name you at least a dozen, but would not.

George wrote: