Deliberate efforts needed to contain school strikes
Students of Mvara Secondary School in Arua District carry their luggage after the school was closed over a strike in 2016. PHOTO | FELIX WAROM OKELLO
What you need to know:
- The issue: School strikes
- Our view: All factors need to be exhausted and the possible remedies outlined. This should be an urgent intervention to curtail similar incidents in yet-to-be affected schools.
A spate of school strikes is taking a huge toll on the education sector in the country. Social media and the mainstream have of recent been littered with reports of school strikes that have left properties worth billions of shillings destroyed.
In the past one month, seven schools in the West Nile sub-region alone have had to deal with destructive strikes, leading to their closure. In other parts of the country, too, students have been embroiled in similar violence over anything from missing a particular dish on the menu to having a bad sports result.
The burden of restoration of damaged properties is usually placed on the shoulders of parents and school administrations. Even in ‘normal economic times’ such a burden is costly but the country, like the rest of the world, is coming off two years of dire straits as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is very unfortunate that after all this time with schools closed, it is strikes and not recovery of lost times that is taking the toll on schools.
The challenge is on the stakeholders in the Education sector to make deliberate efforts to address these strikes. This is not a new phenomenon but a textbook from past spates with the only change, perhaps, being the timing. In the recent past, strikes were rife in schools in the second calendar term more than any other. The only incidents related to violence in the first term would mostly be about sports activities. But now it appears more spontaneous, wanton, and unexplained.
Authorities have in the past addressed these issues and it should not be too difficult to do so even today. Coming off the debilitating impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic means one of the root causes of the recent strikes should already be everyone’s guess. The post-Covid pandemic stress is real and is affecting not just those who lost a source of income in the last two years but also young learners.
It is also possible that the prolonged closure of schools affected the education mindset. What more, almost all schools are making efforts to catch up with the syllabi since students have had to skip a class or two and yet in most cases are being taken through it all. In this case, it is possible that this pace is draining out the learners and the resultant stress and pent-up energy is released through strikes.
In carrying out a thorough assessment of what is fueling the latest spate of strikes in schools, all factors need to be exhausted and the possible remedies outlined. This should be an urgent intervention to curtail similar incidents in yet-to-be affected schools. Schools must also be encouraged to exhaust the advantage of debates during intense academic moments such as now so that students release such pent-up energy in talking among themselves in formal capacities.
