School Needs

Uganda has an under-resourced school system but educational administration at national and local levels works well. There are national standards for schools which are professionally monitored by school inspectors. In order to overcome the shortage of resources within the state sector the entire education system was opened up to allow investment in new private schools by individuals, businesses and voluntary groups. This liberalisation of the system has led to the creation of many new schools – some of them in very fine buildings and charging high fees, others, especially in rural areas, are grossly underfunded. The Humanist schools unfortunately fall into the latter group.

The government is happy that new schools are being set up and they take a pragmatic approach when monitoring them at the start. Schools, even private ones, are inspected regularly and they are expected to show consistent improvement. However, after two years all secondary schools are required to have: an adequate number of classrooms, offices for staff and administrators, access to fresh water, a science lab and at least 8 fully qualified teachers. Additionally, if they want to be able to run national examinations on the school site, they are required to have a school hall with windows to keep out the wind and rain. Schools without a hall have to make arrangements for their students to go to a school which is an approved examination centre, and this can be some distance away.

All the schools supported by the Trust have been established since 2005 and they have been struggling to meet even these minimum national standards. Nevertheless they have made considerable progress in a short time.

Audio diary of Jill Gubbins during Friendship Week Visit, July 2010.

Land and Buildings

All three schools now own the plot of land on which their school stands and each school has some basic brick buildings with corrugated sheeting roofs.

The Isaac Newton School site is the most developed of the schools. It has 5 buildings: an administration block, a four classroom block, a large science lab and prep room, a multi-purpose hall which can be divided, with temporary partitions, into 3 more classrooms. It also has a new solar-powered computer room (foreground) with a network of 8 work stations.

For sports, the students have to walk to a village playing field some way from the school and they would like to acquire suitable land nearer to the school. The school also needs additional land to grow more of their food for school dinners.

Thanks to help from a substantial bequest, UHST is currently helping the school to build a boarding house for girls, including orphans. In future we would like to help them to have a similar facility for boys.

The Mustard Seed School has one multi-purpose main building which serves as a hall and divides into 4 classrooms using wooden partitions. The school has a new science lab, staff offices and a small book store/lending library. Working with the Rationalist Association we have helped the school with money for a borehole and lift pump. This has solved the school’s acute water problem.

We have recently helped the Mustard Seed School to buy additional land for a playing field. Their future needs include clearing and levelling the playing field, constructing a 4-classroom block and boarding facilities for girls and boys.

Fair View School (formerly the Humanist Academy) suffered the fate of being formally closed by the authorities because it did not achieve the minimum standard in the allotted time. They are now starting the process again after renaming the school and getting a commitment from IHEU to fund a building programme. Under the school’s development plan IHEU will have to provide money for a library, a science lab, an additional classroom, the grading of the land for a playing field and teachers’ accommodation (a new requirement).

Teachers

The most important resource in any school is its teachers. Each of the schools has a small, loyal group of teachers who do their best to deliver the curriculum. As the schools are small they rely on teachers coming in for a few hours at a time.

Few of the teachers are employed on a full-time basis. Funds are limited, so many teachers are poorly qualified and many have completed no formal teacher training. Raising sufficient money to offer secure salaries for well-qualified teachers is a challenge. If they could raise more money for student bursaries it would secure the income they need to pay teachers. The Trust is working with the schools to find ways to improve their ability to attract and retain good teachers.

The strong commitment of teachers to their Humanist schools is illustrated by the comments of Jackson:

”I am both a social worker and a Teacher. I teach English Language at Fair View School and also work at the nearby Children’s Rehabilitation Centre.

I am very happy to be associated with this new school, which provides scholarships to poor and orphaned children. The residents of the area are delighted that the school has opened to bring secondary education to the area. They appreciate the fact that the school does not segregate children on the basis of religion, as many other schools do, and they know the children are not going to be indoctrinated. This is a very good principle and I wish the school a lot of success.”

Water

Having clean water for drinking, washing and cleaning has been a problem in all three schools. Water has had to be carried in jerry cans into the schools so there has been little water for drinking – perhaps one drink a day – and students are not always able to wash their hands after visiting the latrine. This is a serious health issue. We have helped the Isaac Newton School by putting in two large 5,000 litre tanks to store water collected from the roofs of classrooms. The Rationalist Association and readers of New Humanist have paid for a borehole and lift pump at the Mustard Seed School. IHEU are looking for ways to help their Fair View school to collect water in a similar way to Isaac Newton.

Further improvements in water, drainage and sanitation are needed in all three schools.

School meals and cooking facilities

Many of the students walk a long way to school and few have breakfast before they leave home. As a result concentration falls with blood sugar levels. To combat this problem the schools have found that they need to provide the students with a good meal each day. Constructing a kitchen and employing a cook are necessary costs but the schools are all making an effort to grow their own food. The students help with this and it provides a practical aspect to agriculture which is taught as an examination subject. It is a priority to improve the klitchens in the schools and to install efficient means of cooking instead of relying on the inefficient method of placing cooking pots on three stones over an open fire.

Books

International educational research demonstrates the important contribution that books and reading make to raising educational standards. Fostering a reading culture is particularly crucial for the schools, because they all operate in areas where primary education is basic and many students have poor levels of reading and writing when they enter secondary school. Also, as Humanist schools, they see it as important to foster a spirit of independent enquiry and they appreciate that high standards of reading and writing are important if students are to be successful in adult life. Although books are expensive, the schools want to provide every student with their own textbook in each of the main subjects. They are also trying to build up libraries to encourage reading for pleasure. At the present time they are a long way from the ideal and would appreciate assistance from individuals and groups. The photograph shows the Isaac Newton School’s new lending library.

There is a desperate shortage of visual material in the schools, which makes teaching difficult. For example, in a Geography lesson on glaciation the students had to be content with listening to the teacher and copying notes from the chalk board. There were no pictures available to show the students exactly what a glacier looks like – even though there are glaciers on Mount Stanley in the Ruwenzori Mountains of Uganda! So the schools are looking for help to buy picture books and wall charts.

Science equipment, computers and electricity

Humanist schools value the contribution that science makes to human progress and seek to reflect this in the curriculum. The Isaac Newton School is the first of the Trust schools to have a dedicated science lab, built with assistance from IHEU. Mustard Seed has built a science lab with help from the founder’s family and the Rationalist Association.

UHST is now working with a science supply company in Kampala to provide the schools with adequate laboratory equipment for them to do science in a practical way.

The need for electricity has risen up the list of priorities. UHST worked with HAMU, the Norwegian Humanists, to connect the Mustard Seed to mains electricity. Solar panels that we have put into the Isaac Newton School have enabled the school to install a computer network. This has brought a huge increase in learning resources including a huge off-line encyclopedia, 800 electronic books and many DVDs of films and Shakespeare plays.

We would like to make laptop computers available to teachers in the school to help them with their lesson preparation and record keeping.

Resources of all kinds

As we all know, a good school is more than a building. It is defined by the richness of the activities that take place within it. Teachers, books and equipment are important as are the whole range of curricular and extra-curricular activites which the schools offer their students. When the only resource is a chalk board, chalk becomes a significant item of expenditure. While students are normally asked to provide their own pens, pencils and exercise books, the schools also have to have stocks for children who cannot afford to buy their own. Stationery and printing has to be arranged outside the school for essential handouts and money must be found for national examination fees.

In a recent meeting, where students were asked to discuss how they would like to improve their schools, one child quoted his father as saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!” We might wonder who taught his father the phrase but the implications are clear. The boy went on to say that their school had cleared land and made goals to create a football pitch and they had a team that had won matches in the local school league. However, their only football had burst so their playing was temporarily halted. They urgently needed a new football and other students put in an impassioned plea for basketballs and netballs.

All the schools promote dancing and singing, which are low-cost activities, but they are also very keen to obtain materials for arts and crafts. The schools are trying to create school farms and establish stock rearing in order to bring agriculture lessons to life. The Isaac Newton School, for example, promotes pig rearing in the small farms around the school.

Would you be willing to help?

Although recently established, the Humanist schools in Uganda are making remarkable progress in bringing secondary education to children who would previously have had none. They have committed and energetic school managers and teachers with a vision for the future. We hope you will want to work with us to help the schools to develop.