By Mary Poni
President Salva Kiir Mayardit on Monday ordered the ministries of education to implement free primary and secondary education policies in the country.
President Kiir in an address on the State-run South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC) last Monday evening directed the Ministry of General Education and Instructions to come up with policies that shall promote and attract free and compulsory primary and secondary education in the country.
The ministry of finance and planning together with development partners were further urged to avail the necessary funding to the ministry of education to ensure that the policy is executed.
President Kiir said that the government is taking education matters seriously and every institution should ensure that free education policy in public schools is adhered to.
“All levels of government should ensure that free education policy is adhered to as provided by the law, including free registration of pupils and students,” Kiir noted in his statement.
Meanwhile, an educationist in the University of Juba, William Deng welcomes President Kiir’s directives on restoring free primary and secondary education in the country – saying every child should have access to learning.
He said if the policy makers have defined that schools should be for free, then who are they (teachers) to say no to it.
However, he underlined that the government should go beyond that order to improve the overall welfare for the education system by providing resources for general education.
“Now we are for that if they set up that policy,” Deng told the No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper yesterday.
He added that, since President Kiir is the one managing the country, people should follow what he said and implement it.
“Public education is the way to go. It is a better mother if we want everybody to have education, and if we want to increase the leaders, we have to upgrade public education system where everybody gets a chance for education,” Deng said.
“We are to put resources there as much as provided because we have public schools now that are not well funded especially the teachers are not well paid,” he noted.
The educationists said that secondary and primary teacher’s salary needs to be improved so that they would be motivated to do a better job.
“If we don’t have good primary and secondary schools, we will not have good universities,” Deng cited.