The heats for the interschool athletics regional championships have just been completed in the different regions in preparation for the national one. This is an annual event which is highly anticipated by both teachers and students.
True, sports is very important as part of the education of young people in the country and that is why stakeholders give it the due regard and prepare and plan for it every year. Schools are charged a certain amount for the championship.
Before these regional championships therefore each school organizes an inter-house athletics competition in order to select their individual athletes for the national event. These have become very popular and each school does it with a lot of pump and glory.
As these inter-house competitions take place on different days for each school, concerns have been raised in some quarters that it is affecting the attendance of students as they usually wish to attend the events in other schools. If these are held on school days, it means many students will miss some lessons thus affecting their overall attendance.
This will obviously reflect negatively on their overall performance in both internal and external examinations. Perhaps this is one of the areas the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education should look into in their efforts to improve the performance of Gambian children in external examinations.
Observers therefore suggest that a day be set aside for all the schools to observe their inter-house nationally. Alternatively, each region could have a day on which all the schools in the region will observe their inter-house. In this way, students will not miss lessons for attending another school’s inter-house as they would themselves be observing theirs.
