By Samuel Serry Jr.
The Prince of Wales Secondary School at Kingtom cannot be excluded from the club of old prestigious schools with an enviable learning infrastructure and solid academic record since its establishment in 1925. The school was a bastion of science education – producing some of the most brilliant minds in Sierra Leone. Regrettably, this very impressive chapter appears to be waning out.
Chairman of School’s Board of Directors, Dr Walton Gilpin has made a passionate plea to former students of the school to come to the rescue.
On Wednesday 16th October 2019, Dr Gilpin visited the school and discovered the need for a complete overhaul of the school’s facilities including toilets, science and computer labs, the perimeter fence the technology building etc.
Whilst the Physics and Chemistry laboratories can largely boast of equipment and chemical reagents supplied 20 years ago and may no longer be usable, the computer lab and school library cannot boast of the necessary comforts for learning. Students can hardly use the library where the presence of broken and dusty shelves mean many of the available books have to be piled up and left on the floor like junk.
Security around the school has been compromised by the collapse of large sections of its perimeter fence facing the sea and it is imperative that immediate action is taken to protect the administrative building from future collapse into the sea.
The technology workshop building which is in advanced stages of dilapidation was reported to be used as a private carpentry workshop. Consistently, students who could not access the building have to take classes under a tree.
It is not clear how the school field landed into the hands of the Sierra Leone Cricket Association which is currently transforming it into a cricket ground ahead of an international competition. What is however clear is the fact that, the field can’t be used by students for other sporting disciplines like football as well as for Physical and Health Education sessions.
Hinting on a potential return to the single shift system, Dr Walton Gilpin bemoaned the less appreciable performance by the school in recent public examinations and asked that the school’s administration be empowered to reverse this trend. *Certainly we know, the administration is working under very challenging circumstances and we cannot fault them for all the lapses but what we have seen here today is unacceptable and there is no way we can settle for less. We owe it to the younger generation to ensure this school returns to its rightful place…It is either now or never…”* he maintained.
