At least 70 students of long-distance elementary schools at Batu Rakit village in Bayan district, North Lombok regency, West Nusa Tenggara, have been forced to study at mushala or under the trees due to the absence of school facilities.
The long-distance school, which has only three classrooms, has not been able to accommodate the rising number of students, which now reaches 132 pupils.
School founder Raden Abdul Basit told kompas.com news portal in Lombok on Wednesday that his school was initially designed to prepare local students until the third grade before they were ready to join the main school.
Later on nearly all the students, who were prepared to continue their studies at the main school, have increasingly been reluctant to go the main school because it is located farther away or about seven kilometers under the hill where they live.
“The students prefer to study here as the most important for them is that they can study. The problem is that we have only eight teachers,” Basit said.
He explained that the poor condition of the school had been informed to the local regental administration for several times, but no response was available.
When the information was confirmed with head of North Lombok regency's Youth and Sports
Education Agency Ijab Arwadi, he admitted he was careless about the condition of the
school.
Ijab argued that North Lombok is a new regency and he himself was just installed as the
new head of the agency several months ago.
Ijab promised to deploy a team of his staff to make inventory and build new classrooms
for the school.
“Hopefully construction of the new facilities will start early in August,” he said.
| 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|