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The Eritrean governments fiat ordering all students who completed grade 11 to report to Sawa by June 30, 2003 is creating a great discontent among students, parents, education professionals and the general public. According to this new requirement, which was announced in May 2003, the students are expected to undergo military training from July 1 to September 20, before their enrollment in grade 12 at the military compound in Sawa. Contributing to the anxiety of the parents is that they are being asked to finance their students tuition and military training. Days before the students report to Sawa, the government has not announced the fees but the amount is widely expected to be Nakfa 2,000 per student. Since the governments announcement, schools have seen a precipitous decline in attendance with many students, particularly girls, choosing to stay at home. "Instead of attending to our concerns regarding previous abuse of our daughters in Sawa, the government is now asking us to pay for the crimes against our own children" said one bitter parent. The abuse refers to the alleged sexual misconduct by military officers against young Eritrean girls who were conscripted during the Eritrea-Ethiopia border wars. A veteran schoolteacher described the governments recent decision as irrational. Speaking to our reporter on background, the teacher said, It is totally absurd, unjustified and is a major blow to the education system."
Eritreas Minister of Education, Mr. Osman Saleh, attempted to explain the governments decision in his appearance on the state television, Eri-TV, on June 17. The minister stated that the governments policy requiring all 11th graders to go to Sawa applied to everyone, including children of foreign nationals because, effective this year, the Sawa Warsay-Yikealo High School will be the only high school completion institution in the entire nation.
Peppered with a series of questions, the minister explained that he was just delivering a message and that he didnt have answers to many of the questions. In preparation for the next school year, the government has allotted a relatively great deal of resource to Sawas Warsay-Yikealo High School. After enrolling 5,200 military personnel and civil servants in a teacher academy, the government has selected 1,100 individuals who will serve as teachers in the 2003-04 academic year. The idea, according to knowledgeable sources, is to solve the inferior quality of Eritreas middle and junior high schools, in one fell swoop at grade 12. The fear is that this will further starve the middle and junior high schools worsening their already untenable teacher to student ratio. Indicative of this imbalance is the case of Red Sea Secondary School (formerly known as Haile Selassie School or by its acronym Qe. Ha. S.), which enrolls 8,000 students and employs 62 teachers, or a ratio of 129 students per teacher. A teacher tells our reporter this [Warsay-Yikealo High School] is the most irrational and wasteful use of human resources ever seen in Eritrea." |
