Pupils of Kperisi MA Primary School marched into their classroom with beaming smile and excitement. Their excitement is however cut short when they were asked by the teacher to sit for the day’s lesson to begin.

Only two of the 56 pupils in this classroom can boast of a table and a chair their parents bought them. The rest have to depend on the dirty bare floor here.  

Over 500 pupils of the Kperisi M.A. Primary School in the Wa Municipality of the Upper West region lie prostrate on the dirty bare floor to write because they are without furniture.

The fortunate ones have the walls of the classroom to lean on with their legs stretched thereby disturbing their colleagues who sit in front of them. In that case, the teacher is able to move with cheeky ease.

The situation is, however, different when they are given class exercise to do. They lie prostrate on the bare floor with their books in front of them whilst they do the class exercise.  Hardly could the teacher gets an inch of space to walk through to supervise the class exercise. 

Also, ventilation and visibility in the classrooms are poor forcing the pupils to crawl on the bare floor to get closer to the blackboard in the process pulling the teacher down sometimes.

Rosina Diedong, the headmistress of the School, said the situation is the same for all the classes in the lower primary.

According to her, the pupils don’t only get waist pains as a result but they also catch a cold which always land them in the hospital.

Diedong said the pupils also have their school uniforms torn sometimes exposing their vital parts.

In the upper primary, the pupils outnumbered the number of furniture there forcing some to sit 3 in a dual desk instead of 2.

Some of the dual desks are on the verge of breaking and others have crooked stands, making it difficult to sit in. 

Another area of concern is the poor visibility and ventilation in the classrooms. The inhabitable conditions in the school, according to the teachers,  are not encouraging enough for them to put in their best.

School authorities and the pupils are appealing to the government and other benevolent organization to come to their aid.