Last Habari: News April 2015 covered the beginning of the second trimester and the children reporting after Easter break. The children gradually settled to school work even though they were curious of the flash floods that had swept through the town a few days before their return. Painful reports are still being shared by families on the damage, loss of property and uncertainty of recovery from the floods.
THIRD GRADERS: Our third graders are always new each year to Jubilee School because it is in this class that we receive our news students who come from different parts of the Maasai districts and from various schools, some very remote in every learning aspect such that some children do not know what they are expected to have learned at their age and school level. I had a telephone conversation with the class teacher who is also our deputy head teacher and he told me that about ten out of thirty third graders were not prepared for the school work in that grade as required. He had to work with the whole class in such a way that each child could be at the same level and this means going slowly while at the same time trying to cover the syllabus at the end of the trimester and keeping the rest of the students at the standard pace. Some parents were happy to know that their children were making progress and felt more will be done in order to give children confidence. This enabled the teachers to find out if the children had not had a good chance to develop well in their former schools.
FINAL CLASS THIS YEAR: Our head teacher Sr. Pauline and her deputy Mr. Mosonic have informed me that we have promising candidates in our final class this year. The class has more students this year than we had in the last two years and we have thirty-nine students who will take final examinations at the end of the year. Mock (imitating) examinations results with other schools indicated that our children are ranking well. I am hoping that the grades are going to improve in the remaining months before the public examinations at the end of the year.
SURPRISE TELEPHONE CALL: I called our head teacher on Saturday June 27, 2015 to catch up with school news and among other things she informed me that one of our girl pupils was admitted in a local hospital and that she had called her parents from a remote area to come and be with their child. It is one thing for children to be in a boarding school away from home and a different experience to be admitted in a hospital away from home. I asked whether the parents have a cell phone and if I could have their number. I made a phone call and got the parents who were at the bed side in the hospital with their child. It was a surprise, I said I am Father Ntaiyia and I am calling from America to wish their daughter a quick recovery. I also talked with the pupil who knows me and was very thrilled hearing me on phone. The parents told me that she will be discharged in two days. This call will be a talk of the year.
EXTRA-CURRICULUM: I have explained in the past that extra-curriculum plays a vital role in the development of students in the Kenyan system of Education like in many other countries. The training for various activities takes place during the first and second trimester. The third trimester is mostly occupied with academics as students prepare for public examinations and end of the year exams that prepare them for promotion to the next grade in the following year. This trimester the students are busy with Music and I was informed that some of our students are practicing verses or poetries and dramatized dance. Other activities are athletics that include long races and short races. Here we allow the children to take part without expecting much because most of them are very small these days for the level of grades they are. Our deputy head teacher Mr. Mosonik informed me that out of 9 activities that were assigned to every school in the county for competition Fr. Ntaiyia Jubilee School students were able to place in three of them and 29 of our students are going for competition with other schools outside the county.
GENERAL EDUCATION REPORTS
There have been remarkable reports on education by prominent people in Kenya carried by new papers. The Daily Nation reported on April 29 this year that some teachers do not understand the curriculum = (program of study) Syllabus = (course outline) they are required to teach, a study has revealed. This has been blamed on lack of support from the government and other training institutions. A Global Monitoring Education for All 2000-2015 report which was officially released by Kenyan Education Cabinet Secretary in April 2015 further reveals that older teachers in the country lose skills over time due to lack of in-service training and that most of the teachers who are furthering their education are doing so at their own costs.
The report notes that there was lack of innovative (inventive) teaching methods in private schools in Kenya, with public schools having more scope to be innovative with the curriculum. This is because it appears that most private schools are more devoted to parents’ demands for good examination results. This is where Father Ntaiyia Jubilee School initially did not want to go by name “academy” because this had been misinterpreted to mean only for academic without being all-inclusive or all around education for a child.
Comparisons between public and private schools in some developing countries suggest private schools have less teacher absenteeism rate. I can affirm the importance of this and that it makes a difference when a teacher is in the classroom when he /she is supposed to be there. When I was teaching in the Diocesan boys’ school and it happened that I was to be away from school for three days, even though I had less lessons to give in a week than other teachers, it was not easy to get time to cover the pending lessons while at the same time keeping the flow of the ongoing lessons as required for that week. I had to teach during evening study time and for that reason I do not see how a teacher who is absent from school for a week can easily cover the lost work.
The report further notes that living in a rural area or being poor and marginalized as some of the Maasai families are cuts a child’s chances of attending early learning. This becomes difficult among people like the Maasai whose children have to walk long distances to school and the little ones have no school nearby home for pre-primary education. For that reason the parents have to wait until a child can be able to walk to school and this would be at the age of being in class one (first grader) without having been to pre-school.
Fr. Ntaiyia
School website: https://mhl.hxi.mybluehost.me/website_e30e867a/ or Friends of Father Ntaiyia Jubilee School