By last week some schools had started sending pupils and students home, one week ahead of the official closing date set by the Ministry of Education and Sports.
According to the Ministry of Education of and Sports calendar, children are supposed to be at school for a period of about ninety days. It is, therefore, unfair for some schools to cut short the term and send children home a week before the date set by government.
Indeed, this is not only unfair to the pupils and students but also to the parents and guardians. For the pupils and students it affects them in a way that they may not be able to complete covering what is supposed to be handled in a given term. For the parents and guardians, there is no value for the money they pay in terms of fees since the services that their children pay for are cut short.
It seems the schools which are in the habit of doing this aim at saving the money that they should have otherwise spent in terms of feeding, electricity, water, stationery, medical bills and other costs while the children are at school.
So, in order to curb this behavior, the Ministry of Education and Sports officials should act very fast to rectigy the anomaly and Inspectors of Schools must ensure that they visit schools to ensure that school activities carry on up to the very last day of closure set by government.
The excuse by school directors and headmasters that when children finish examinations, they can be sent home and then return later to collect report cards is a lame one and unacceptable. Not only is it inconveniencing to the children but also an extra cost to the parents.
There must be a standard date for all the schools in the country to begin and close and serve the children with assessment report cards.
This would lead to uniformity among different schools all over the country because at the end of the day the pupils and students sit for the same national examinations
