Info about Banban School
Trip Start
Jan 23, 2006
1
5
Trip End
Ongoing
Banban Community, Vanuatu
Sunday, March 5, 2006
Banban Primary School is in the community of Banban on the Island of Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. It is the local school for nearly 200 children ranging from kindergarten to Year 6. Many of the children come from surrounding Islands to Santo and these children live in the community during the term and then go back to their families for holidays. The community is very much managed by the church and the children either stay with host families, other relatives or at the church itself. This is all possible due to the strong sense of community and family that there is here in Vanuatu. Where the western world has seen the decline of family and community, here in Vanuatu it is central.
There is a shortage of teachers in the school, for the 2006 year there are only 5 teachers plus the headmistress. Year 3 does not have a teacher so the Years 1 and 2 teacher has stepped into the breach and teaches Year 3. Years 1 and 2 are taught by the headmistress who normally does not take any classes but this year will be teaching Years 1 and 2 unless they can find another teacher to fill the post. They don't have any money (as a school or as a government) so the salaries are very low.
At school the children are taught Maths, English, News, General, Environment and recently have started French. My responsibility has been to teach English to Years 3-6. This is children ranging from 8-12 although there are some as old as 14 in Year 6. This is because they have no managed to pass Year 6 yet and are repeating the year. Children who don't pass year 6 do not go on to secondary school, this means that there are many children who never really learn to read or write. They leave school at 12 years old and continue to grow up in the community, working at home with mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, grandparents. They may look after their younger siblings until they marry and have children of their own. They may work in the home, in the garden, on the farm or become fishermen like their male relatives.
In Vanuatu, schooling is not compulsory - if parents can afford to pay the school fees then they will send their children to school. If they have more than one child they may not be able to afford to educate all of them. Education is a privilege here rather than a basic right which we take for granted in the Western world. School fees range across all of Vanuatu, there are some local schools like Banban which charge between 1000-2000 Vatu per term. Other schools in town or Boarding Schools cost much more and some parents will save every Vatu to send their children to them. The cost of Banban equates to about 10 pounds sterling per term. It is unbelievable for most of us to imagine being unable to pay this but most the parents cannot. There is a long list of outstanding school fees for pupils. If the fees are not paid then the children don't go to school.
Some parents raise the money for school fees by begging tourists when them come on the luxury Cruise Ships once a month. Others buy baking ingredients and bake 'Kato' or cakes/sweet breads for the students to buy during breaktime. Those with vegetables and fruit trees growing on their land will send their kids to school with bags of fruit or vegetables for the students to buy at breaktime. The food is all laid out and the teachers manage the purchase and make sure the money goes to the correct parent. It's a bit like having a tuck shop but here we guard against the flies and other insects in the food.
School starts at 7.30am with devotion (worship) for a few minutes, and continues until 9.30am when the kids have a 30minute break when we encourage them to get some air and run around. After break the kids have another 90minutes in the classroom and then they break for lunch at 11.30am. All classes must pray before their lunch and they sing a song to thank God for their food. It goes something like this... "Before I eat my food, I like to stop and say, thank you God, thank you God for this my food today. Amen" They come back at 1pm and continue lessons until 3pm with another short break in between. Sometimes they will play sports in the afternoon instead of lessons. School is Monday to Thursday all day and then Friday they play soccer and volleyball in the morning and then finish school and start their weekend. They live for the weekend when they can play with their friends in the sea, run about and help around the home. Most of them are responsible for looking after the animals at home, chickens, pigs, dogs, cats etc.
On hot days the classrooms are stifling and it is very difficult for the children and the teachers to concentrate for longer than a few minutes let alone 2 hrs. There are normally two types of day here, hot days when the temperatures in the summer are into their 30's degrees C with 95% humidity, and the rainy days. Rain comes in torrents here. Partly that is being the rainy season which will last until April. After that it will cool off somewhat but the rain will still fall in torrents. When it rains the water bounces off the corrugated iron roofs of the classroom with such a racket that you cannot hear yourself think let alone the kids hear you speaking. With no real teaching resources such as text books this can make teaching very difficult on these days. I have included some pictures of the classrooms, the kids (or the Bislama word - Pikinini).
The classrooms are incredibly primitive, wooden boards and cement make up the shell and inside the floors are concrete with thin wood or cardboard separating two classrooms. This means that you can hear everything going on in the classroom beside you. This can often be distracting especially if you are trying to teach English and there is a French class next door! Each classroom has a blackboard, wooden benches and tables for the kids, the furniture is very much beaten up and rickety but its hardly surprising since they are built by the families of the students and climbed all over by the kids every day. One of the buildings has electricity, the class 5 and 6 one. Class 3 and 4 has no electricity and when it is raining it can get really dark in the room.
The school bell is an old rusty gas canister which the kids take it in turns to bang on with a rock to signal the start of school, breaktime, restart of classes etc. You can see the school bell in the photo of the classroom for 3 and 4. They are the rusty containers on the right hand side.
Stationery is something which most kids seem to have plenty off, there is a massive amount of tip-ex or white out as they call it, and the kids seem to delight in having to use it to correct their work. Rubbers, rulers, and tip-ex are passed around and thrown across the room with regularity. The most alarming thing thrown around is razor blades, used to sharpen their pencils they throw these around the room or put them in their mouths all the time and you have to have eyes in the back of your head to catch them doing this. They love colouring pencils and when I run word games and competitions in class they will always pick the colouring pencils as prizes rather than things like marbles. The stationery sent over by the West Norwood School was very much welcomed and they treat the pens and pencils with more reverence than anything else in the school!
The money raised by Lodge Scuba was originally earmarked for building a new classroom which they very much need but this would cost about 5 million Vatu, far more than what was raised by LSA. As a start I bought a huge supply of exercise books for the pupils and recently I photocopied some of the text passages from their one and only text book so the kids can do some reading. It is really alarming how many of the kids (up to 12year olds) cannot read. I try to encourage them but they are very shy and embarrassed because they cannot read and the teachers do not have the time (and in some cases the inclination) to help them out with extra lessons.
The remainder of the money will be spent on a brick mould and some cement to start the building of the classroom. The school recently had a fundraiser and managed to raise enough Vatu for 1 tonne of cement. They need so much more though and the money we brought just doesn't stretch that far. The government doesn't seem to help out at all and prices in town for building materials are hugely inflated by the shopkeepers. With everything being shipped from Australia, New Zealand or China the prices in the shops are much more than you would pay for things if in their originating countries.
Letters will be sent over to kids in the West Norwood School, I've also secured a relationship with a boy's school in Australia and so the kids can choose where they would like to send their letters. We're working on the letters in class, they will be very basic and the standard much lower than the reading and writing abilities of kids in Oz or the UK. I hope though they will benefit from receiving and writing letters as it seems to appeal to them. Mind you, they say they are interested but the Vanuatu culture is that of not wanting to disappoint so they tend to say yes to everything you regardless of whether they intend to do the work or even understand. This applies to the adults as well as the children. It's the Ni-Vanuatu way (local term for those born in Vanuatu), say yes regardless of whether you understand, want to do something etc. This can be so frustrating for teachers, volunteers and expatriate workers alike!
