HABARI NEWS: JANUARY 2018
The school re-opened in the first week of January for the first trimester of the school year as per the timetable given by the Ministry of Education in Kenya for all schools. The school activities are expected to run for 14 weeks that will end in the first week of April this year marking the end of the first semester of an academic year. During this period the students are expected to cover syllabus and extracurricular programs for all students in the country in respect to their grades and age. Greetings from us here in school.
The Headteacher has reported that the pupils are going on with the studies as required and registration of our candidates this year for the public examination has started with the Ministry of Education. This exercise goes on in all the schools’ final classes in the country.
He has also reported that government has also launched a digital platform for registration of all learners and staff in all schools. National Education Management Information System (NEMIS) Every learner will be given a unique personal identification number which will be used in all levels (grades) of student’s learning. Each School will be given a code and password for logging in the system.
The Ministry of Education has also released a list of approved books for the new curriculum and this will start with 3rd graders this year. Father Ntaiyia has discussed it with the Headteacher and instructed that the new books be ordered from Bookshop and teachers are to start using them with students as directed by the Ministry of Education in Kenya.
2017 EXAM AND RESULTS:
Public examinations were done, and the results were out while the ongoing students had gone home for a long holiday. They resumed learning with excitement of the performance of yester year candidates whom they left in school waiting for the exams and who will not return to our school for they (candidates) have left for High Schools. For the first week parents brought the students back as the former students who took final examinations were coming to school to see to the documents regarding their examination results and invitation letters to High School that sometimes are communicated through the school. There have been a few days of congratulations and well wishes by all.
NEW SCHOOL YEAR:
The beginning of every school year comes with a few changes in each school. With graduating class gone there is expectation of new students to join our lowest grade and sometimes other grades. Some parents for various reasons may decide to transfer their children from Father Ntaiyia School to other schools.
The school has received and enrolled new students in grades 3 through 6 and by end of January we have 252 pupils in school. We do not enroll new students in grades 7 and 8. The teachers have reported that the new students have settled well even though it is never easy for the small ones who are away from home for the first time in a boarding school environment.
New students regardless of the grade they come in, experience change, new teachers, school mates and classmates. The environment as well can be challenging to them as well as weather for those who come from high altitude areas. Class teachers must find out how prepared the new students in their class are to be in that grade and make sure they are up to date in syllabus and are able to move along in the grade courses. They have what they call tune up examination that they give as soon as the students are back form the Holidays, and this helps them to find out how the new students stand as well as having the ongoing students back to class.
FATHER NTAIYIA SCHOOL PERSONNEL:
Each year we have made sure we have the personnel we need in the school and this makes things easier for the life of the students in our school. We have three people in the building and maintenance / driver. Four in the domestic meaning kitchen and food services. The Matron, Librarian, two in the accounts and banking and twelve teachers. All our teachers are trained in the required standard by the Ministry of Education in Kenya for the job they are employed to do.
OUR FORMER GRADUATES:
We try to be in touch with some of our past graduates. We have news that practically all the students who completed with us last year got to High School. We have students from Father Ntaiyia School who are in Universities now after completing their High School studies and a few who went to two-year colleges after High School are working already. Our past students feel very free to come back to our school when they are in town, some even stay over night and I always feel happy to hear they feel very much at home there. Recently, Sister Pauline who headed Father Ntaiyia School visited a High School about 100 miles from Narok only to find three of her past students in our school there learning. It was a very pleasant surprising meeting.
SCHOOL ENROLMENT AS AT 20TH JAN 2018
Total Boys 136 Girls 128 Total 264
| CLASS | BOYS | GIRLS | TOTAL |
| 3 | 8 | 6 | 14 |
| 4 | 12 | 13 | 25 |
| 5 | 34 | 23 | 57 |
| 6E | 13 | 22 | 35 |
| 6W | 14 | 20 | 34 |
| 7 | 28 | 23 | 51 |
| 8E | 13 | 11 | 24 |
| 8W | 14 | 10 | 24 |
| TOTALS | 136 | 128 | 264 |
BOD MEETING: We held our Friends of Father Ntaiyia Jubilee School (Charity) organizational BOD meeting on January 19 and deliberated on agendas that the members felt were essential such as an update on my trip to the School in October / November, welfare of the students and staff, the repair and maintenance that I supervised during my visit in Father Ntaiyia Jubilee School last in 2017. We also did a review of donations that come mainly with Christmas greetings as well as a financial report and projecting for the New Year. Through Friends of Father Ntaiyia Charity we pay school fees for some students with money that is given by people who mention that their donation should help with tuition for children.
During this trip I transferred the Title Deed of the five acres lot on which Father Ntaiyia Jubilee School is built from my name on which it has been since I bought it in 2004 to the name of the School. The new Title Deed was issued before I left Kenya for the US.
KENYA
Although the elections ended in what appeared peaceful there is still fear that politically things are not going well. However, people are going about their daily lives as they should. Learning resumed well in January and the trimester is going well. The weather is reported to be dry in some part of the country, but this is not unusual for this time of the year although some farmers have lost some of the crops due to dry weather.
EDUCATION CONCERN IN NAROK COUNTY KENYA
Sunday January 28, 2018 daily papers carried a report that, Narok County Governor has ordered the formation of an education taskforce to establish why schools in the county perform poorly in national examinations. The governor is said to have expressed his displeasure with the public examination results posted in 2017 for both elementary and High Schools across the county. Most of the schools are public schools. The decision to form the taskforce was reached during a one-day education stakeholders’ meeting with leading practitioners in the education sector who agreed to improve performance (of learning) in the county.
The Governor is reported to have said: “The future of our children depends on education, so we cannot take chances with academic excellence.” He added that the results point to a major problem in the sector because even those schools that used to be academic giants have sharply declined in performance. Narok Senator who was also in the meeting called on all stakeholders in the education sector to help transform students and pupils in the County. “We are worried by the high percentage of failures in our villages.”
To friends of Father Ntaiyia Jubilee School: I sometimes share such report and there are many of them in Kenya, to point out the reason for such a school as Father Ntaiyia where for the last five years our efforts and especially dedication of the teachers and staff have practically made it possible for all our students to make it in public examinations. Parents see the need to bring their children in a private school where they must pay school fees rather than to free public schools where learning and teaching is not taken seriously. The children in Father Ntaiyia School transfer from some of those public schools. Thank you all for your continued support that allows Father Ntaiyia School to keep school fees affordable for families who bring children there.
Fr. Symon Peter Ntaiyia