Briton Reacts To Tijan Nimaga’s Education Analysis

I read Tijan Nimaga’s piece with interest, being an outsider looking into Gambian education.

Our organization sponsors children’s education in The Gambia and some of us were astounded to learn that seventeen year old Gambians were unable to write one coherent sentence in English after all those years at school. Considering that English is the national language of The Gambia, this is unbelievable.

            One seventeen-year-old boy asked to borrow a calculator to divide 500 by 10. My own 5 year old gave him the answer within seconds.

            Having criticized the youngsters for laziness, we asked to see their mock exam papers and couldn’t believe the basic spelling and grammar errors there in black and white, given to the students by their teachers! Furthermore, this was a private school where classes are small and fees are comparatively high. Goodness knows how any child can leave the state school with any knowledge at all of maths and English with an average of 60 pupils to one teacher. How can anyone be expected to control such a large class, let alone teach them?

            There is no doubt that Gambian youth are being badly let down by the state education system but, then again, what career opportunities await them when they leave school?

Can anyone provide a list of the available jobs? Or are we throwing money away on a poor education system and trying to educate young people whose only hope of a future is to escape The Gambia? The government is missing out on a valuable opportunity to educate its youth and harness their talents in developing their country instead of literally "dying" to leave it.

            James MacGregor,

            Dundee, UK.