By Clement Erik Wong & Sarah Hafizah Chandra
KOTA SAMARAHAN: After 14 long years of putting up at a nearby school, then a rented shop lot, staff and students of SK Merdang here finally have a building to call their own.
SK Merdang headmaster Ninkan Jabing said he was glad to have successfully moved from SK St Martin and settled in the new SK Merdang school building from Sept 1.
“We finally have our own building and (we) are very thankful to the Ministry of Education (MOE), the District Education Office (PPD) and most importantly, Kota Samarahan MP Rubiah Wang, who provided tremendous assistance to us.”
He said this to the press after accompanying Rubiah during the latter’s visit to the school on Monday (Sept 7).
Ninkan said overall, the building met the expectation of staff, students and parents, who were previously concerned with the learning environment provided by the school’s previous locations.
He pointed out that the building had enough facilities to accommodate the school’s 946 students comprising two pre-school classes and a total of 19 classes from Primary 1 to Primary 6.
“We are planning on opening one more class for each of the Primary 1 to Primary 5 classes in order to accommodate the large number of students in the current classes.
“However, we have not received any instructions yet to open up more classes. There may not be an official letter yet, but we are ready to open.”
The building has 24 classrooms in total, which allows for 1,000 students at any one time. The school has 43 teachers.
“As the number of classes increase, we will need more teachers, but this is not a problem as MOE will assist us,’’ Ninkan assured.
