Model Primary School, Bernard Carr Street in the Port Harcourt Township, last Tuesday held its first Inter-House Sports competition, with an appeal to the Rivers State Government, the Primary Schools Board and the Ministry of Education to deploy new teachers to the school.
This appeal became necessary because the school is facing acute shortage of teaching staff as the newly transferred teachers to the school have not reported since their posting.
The Head Mistress of the school, Pastor Gloria Osogim who said this in her welcome address during the sports meet reeled out other challenges confronting the school which included poor learning and teaching environment, dilapidated suckerways, leaking roofs and lack of electricity supply for effective usage of the computers in the school.
Pastor Osogim expressed profound gratitude to the chairman, Primary Schools Board, Ven. Fyneface Aka for recognizing the importance of sports as an integral part of human development, pointing out that aside from academics, physical education was a very vital aspect of human life and mental alertment, and pledged that the school would adopt the event as an annual feature.
In his speech as the chairman of the programme, the Director, Primary Education, Rivers State Universal Basic Education Board, Mr. Ngofa E. Diri commended the authorities of the school for complying with the passionate desire of the chairman, Rivers State Primary Schools Board, Fyneface Aka in the promotion of sports among primary schools as a way of catching them young.
As Diri put it: “The Board Chairman is passionate about sports and the best time to do sports is when you are young and that is the time to catch them young. Sports does a lot of things for people, it changes the lives of people in different ways, so parents should encourage their children to participate in sporting activities because it is not longer for dropouts but for people destined with talents who can be furture bread winners of their families and who can make states and countries proud”.
Also speaking, the Sports Desk Officer in the State UBE Board, Fubara, Alabo advised parents to encourage and sponsor any of their children that shows interest in sports and urged all schools, primary, secondary and universities to take sports seriously as part of their curriculum and activities.
The event featured four group of houses; White, Green, yellow and Red with Green House emerging the overall first winner, Yellow second while White clinched the third position.