Dokolo school where students pay teachers

Volunteer teachers at Adok Seed Secondary School, Dokolo District, receive salaries through contributions by students as their monthly stipend.

The government is yet to take over the rundown community school.  Each term, every student pays a boarding fee of Shs220,000, and it is from this collection that 16 volunteer teachers providing services at this school earn their salary.

“We share whatever we have got. Whether everybody is walking away with Shs20,000, it is not a problem,” says the acting school head teacher, Mr Joseph Otim.

He adds: “In 2018, the first teachers received Shs20,000 each  in first term. We could get everything and say this is what we have got. It has been a hard journey.”

This needy school with a total enrollment of 42 students; 24 females and 18 males, was started by the community in 2017 with a vision to allow children access to quality and affordable education.

The distance to the nearest Agwata Secondary School is more than eight kilometres. However, the immense challenges that Adok Seed School is currently facing are now threatening its existence.

Just like classrooms, the wall of the pit-latrine, which teachers share with their students, is wooden and has many open spaces.

All the classes from Senior One to Senior Four neither have windows nor doors, with the only metallic objects used in the construction of the classrooms being iron sheets and nails.

What boys are proud to call a dormitory is an abandoned dilapidated structure on the Dokolo-Lira Highway that used to be a grinding mill for someone. At this boys’ dormitory, there is no bathing shelter.

Girls are using an unfinished semi-permanent structure near the wooden classrooms.

 Boys take their bath in an unfinished structure at Te-booster Trading Centre and defecate in a nearby forest, according to Stephen Gerald Okuja, 20, a Senior Four student.

“But we have accepted to accommodate students in a wooden structure, to act as classes. But termites keep eating the wall and we are worried anytime it might fall on us,” the acting school head teacher says, adding: “The books that the government has brought, as we talk, are all eaten by termites because there is no safe place to store them. And if you get to the new curriculum, we don’t have an ICT lab, we don’t have laboratories and other items.”

Bata Secondary School in Bata Sub-county, Agwata Secondary School in Agwata Sub-county, and Kangai Secondary School in Kangai Sub-county have been so fundamental in lending a helping hand to Adok Seed School. Nonetheless, this miracle school was the best in UCE in the entire Dokolo District after its candidate posted Aggregate 17 in 2021.

Because it has no centre number, UCE candidates have been sitting exams in the neighbouring schools. This year, the 17 UCE registered candidates will sit their final exams at Kangai Secondary School, about 40 kilometres away.

The school leadership acknowledges that even after doing minor renovation on the boys’ dormitory, it is risky because the place is not guarded.

“We are looking forward to finding ways of building a dormitory on the school land. We have engaged them (students) and they are moulding bricks to construct their own dormitory,” Mr Otim says.

“So, we hope by maybe the third term, even when the construction of the dormitory is not yet complete, the students will have to come and sleep in that dorm because the risk they are facing is too much,” he adds.

Even when the issue of the structures might be addressed in the coming months or years, sustaining the volunteering teachers will remain a big challenge.

This newspaper has learnt that some of the teachers come from very far,  which is challenging to   have them at the beginning of the following term.

“The parents are poor, with most of them being peasant farmers. Out of the little fees that they pay, almost 50 percent fail to complete. In term one [this year], the school ended up with a deficit of about Shs4 million unpaid fees dues. That Shs4 million at least would help to make our teachers very happy. At the end of the term, the teachers walked away almost without anything,” the school acting head teacher adds.

Mr Otim says they have tried to lobby for every type of support from Adok Sub-county leadership, district, central government and non-governmental organisations but the efforts have been fruitless.

“And even our expectation is dying. In fact, that is why the number is going smaller and smaller because when these children are here, they expect a lot. They expect beautiful structures and expect to see the school growing every day but most of the partners whom we would wish to be partners have failed. We don’t have any,” he says. 

Mr Vincent Ogwang, the Board of Governors chairman, says the money that  parents pay is really too little to sustain even students given the rising cost of living.

The land housing the school is so huge, measuring 10.9 acres and it was granted to Adok Seed School by a community school, Hassa Memorial Primary School. And now to make them survive, the teachers are implored to cultivate on the school land.

“I grant the opportunity to everyone to at least have a portion such that even if the term ends so badly, at least you end up with food,”  Mr Otim says.

A Senior Four student, Daniel Opolot, 19, says the boys’ dormitory is very far from their classes, making it difficult for them to study at night and early morning.

“When it rains, our wooded classrooms flood, which interrupts normal studying,” he says.

Joshua Orech, 17,  a Senior Three student, appeals to the government and partners to support them in the construction of classrooms, sanitary facilities and dormitories.