Page 145 - Bahrain Gov annual reports(V)_Neat

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Town Primary and Village Schools. In Manama and Muharraq four primary and four
infants schools were full to capacity throughout the year. The new infants school in Manama
was opened before the building was finished and as many children as possible were taken into it.
Upper classes in the primary schools arc tending to become larger and in some cases it became
necessary to divide and even to sub-divide them and in order to do this more classrooms had to
be added to the schools. Owing to lack of space in some of the primary schools in the towns,
classes of lower primary school grades were opened in several of the infants schools.
In the villages none of the schools have as yet provided a full six-year programme but it is
proposed that as soon as possible there will be full primary courses in some of the larger village
schools. There is a growing demand in the villages for more advanced education but it is not
intended that secondary education in village schools should be attempted ; at present boys who
do well in village schools are brought to Manama where they live as boarders in the hostel and
attend the more advanced town schools. This arrangement seems at present to work well.

Transport. With the opening of more village schools, some of them many miles from
Manama, and the increase in the number of teachers and boys attending special classes and who
have to be moved from place to place to take part in games the problem of transport becomes
more difficult, complicated and costly. There is an intense reluctance on the part of both
teachers and boys to do any walking, although for the three hottest months in the year the
schools are closed. Villagers who are a mile or two miles from a school complain that their
children cannot be expected to walk although a few years ago before buses were as numerous
as they are now the village people thought nothing of walking. The department is saddled
with a quantity of transport which has to spend most of the day idle after taking teachers to
distant schools until the time comes to bring them back again. Frequently buses have to be
hired to transport teachers and students. It would be of great benefit to the Education
Department, and to many people, if a proper bus service could be organised in Bahrain.

Medical. The school doctor continued to pay regular visits to all schools and dealt with
minor ailments. The health of boys in both town and village schools was generally satis­
factory.

General. During the Spring holiday, boys from the school hostel camped out at Saar
and younger boys, including the Scouts, went into camp for six days at Safra, near Rafaa,
Sporting events during the year included various inter-school matches in football, basket-ball
and volley-ball, and in April 1954, during the visit to Bahrain of H.M. King Saud, a very
successful school sports meeting was held at Muharraq.

Finance. The amount spent on boys schools during 1954 was 241 lakhs, this did not
include the cost of new buildings, upkeep and additions to schools. The cost of educating one
boy at school in Bahrain for a school year of nine months, worked out at approximately Rs.400/.

When schools were first started in Bahrain, and for some years afterwards, encouragement
was needed to persuade parents to send their boys to school, this was especially the case in the
villages. To-day, if there were half as many more schools as there are now they would all be
filled. But the boys who have been through the schools are no longer satisfied to follow the
occupations of their fathers and grandfathers. Boys who have had some schooling do not
willingly become fishermen, agriculturalists, stone-cutters, boat builders or manual labourers.
Most of them have the ambition to become “white collared” workers and the capacity of
Bahrain and the neighbouring states to absorb large numbers of this type is strictly limited.