Concern as teachers skip classes to attend funerals

By NAFTAL MAKORI

Kisii, Kenya: Ever heard of professional mourners? Teachers in Kisii region have mastered the art. At least one day of learning is lost every week in schools across the counties of Kisii and Nyamira as tutors attend funerals.

Education officials are now concerned that this trend if not reversed, will continue to hurt academic performance in the region.

The officials, who spoke to The Standard, concur that Friday has become the official day for burials and normal school programmes are often disrupted as teachers, and sometimes pupils, join the community in mourning their loved ones and on occassion, long distance relatives.

Attending burials is viewed as part of the schools’ social responsibility since playgrounds are used for burial ceremonies from Thursday to Friday, when bigger fields are unavailable.

The schools are often required to donate chairs and desks to bereaved families in the village. If the head teacher dares to deny this kind of assistance, he would be mocked and alienated from the community. More often than not, pupils clad in full school uniform can be spotted among the mourners in a funeral.

“Class attendance by teachers on Thursday and Friday is worryingly poor,” says Nyamira County Director of Quality Assurance and Standards Thaddeus Awour.

On Thursdays, majority of teachers reportedly join the bereaved families to escort bodies from morgues ahead of burial on Friday.

In many primary and secondary schools, learners are left on their own on for the better part of Thursday and Friday, instructed to do assignments.

“The quality of education is adversely affected by this tendency. We have been information that teachers never attend classes on those two days of the week. We will not allow the trend to continue,” said Awour.

In the 1990s, burials were common over weekends but that changed as soon as key religious groups begun a tug of war. The Seventh Day Adventists and Catholics, who are predominant in the region, often disagreed on the day the dead should be buried.

TSC County Director Alex Cheruyoit says the issue has been the subject of debate at a number of forums aimed at discussing causes of poor academic performance.

“We have instructed head teachers to give us regular reports on teacher class attendance, and disciplinary action will be taken against those found absconding duty to attend burials,” said Cheruyoit.

In the past, the region has been shamed by poor academic performance with some schools being ranked among the poorest performers in the country.

Nyamira Governor John Nyagarama said his leadership is working towards ensuring schools provide children with quality education.

“We want our teachers to work tirelessly to provide the best quality of education for our children,” says Nyagarama, who once worked as an English language teacher in the 1980s.