Two rural schools share their success stories

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KUCHING: According to a popular saying, it takes a village to raise a child.

Headmasters of Ulu Lubai Primary School, Limbang and Ba Kelalan Primary School, Lawas had more than one child to work with, and more than one village.

Their desire to see their students excel despite all odds garnered them shared recognition in the 2009 Commonwealth Education Good Practices Awards.

Pudun Tadam of Ba Kelalan Primary School and Jaul Bunyau of Ulu Lubai Primary School yesterday shared their  stories in a talk on community participation in quality education.

“Our projects are similar, yet both won,” said Pudun. “Jaul’s was for taking the school into the longhouse, and mine for taking nine villages into the school.”

Emphasising that before the government took the role; schools were always started and supported by the local community.

Pudun described how there were sceptics when he decided that something had to be done with the school’s dismal passing rate.

“We were in the bottom 10. When I said that we will achieve top 10, there were people who believed, and those who didn’t.”

Ba Kelalan Primary School met their goal of achieving top 10 places in the UPSR, gradually overtaking other schools in the district and climbing up to top five, then top three.

Jaul had similar success stories to share.

He described a rural school of 30 students in six classes, with 11 teachers and one staff. He also described the sometimes gruelling journey up to Ulu Lubai.

“During rainy season, it’s a two to three hour journey by boat,” he said. “But during the dry season, it can become a seven hour walk, dragging your boat with you.”

He said that the key to the school’s success started with identifying their strength, which turned out to be the local community.

“It took a while to see this,” Jaul admitted. “When it comes to working together for the good of the school, people will work three days with no pay to help. This is our culture. Why are we not using this?”

He pointed out that most of the longhouse folk have no money to give, but they are willing to spare the time and energy.

He also described the early attempts to incorporate English into their daily school life. Success was gradually achieved through encouragement and simple incentives for active users.

“We made sure that the students aren’t made fun off if they use the wrong word or say it wrong.”

The school also makes use of Facebook to help improve their English.

The talk was organised by Sarawak Development Institute (SDI) and supported by the Education Department.