Achievements and Challenges

Dear all,

I think it is time for an update.

The most important piece of news from the school is that we finally received the Primary Leavers exam results.  Last year’s Primary 8 did spectacularly well, even beating the previous year’s class, who were already scraping along the top locally. The average score in 2023 was 367 and in 2024 it was 411. These marks are out of 500.  I have now placed them all in secondary school.  As the problem of late issuing of exam results was a nationwide issue, the secondary headteacher made adjustments to the academic year to cater for the new Senior 1 pupils, so that they started school in late April and will have very little holiday this year in order to catch up on the curriculum for their year group.  Thankfully, the long wait did not faze the students too much.

The church interior in better days.  There are now
a lot of holes in the walls and the room is leaning.

There was a very heavy wind a few weeks ago which is causing the church building we use for classes to lean.  It was very poorly constructed in the first place, made of dried mud and bamboo poles on a poorly constructed wooden framework.  We share the use of this building with a local evangelical church, who have no money to do anything.  Rather than allow the building to collapse on top of our Primary 7 and Primary 8 classes, I agreed that we would assist.  Some new poles are going to be put inside to act as pillars to rectify the leaning structure.  The walls need repair and the part of the roof is flapping loudly whenever there is a bit of wind.  I hope you will agree that this is a way of supporting the school’s neighbours as well as keeping our children safe.  The work will cost around £630 including labour.  I am lucky to have a very good builder, who can be trusted to do a good job.

The major challenge at the school is absenteeism by older pupils, who have far too much responsibility outside school.  This is because of extreme poverty.  An example of this is one of our Primary 8 pupils, who I shall call John, who was absent for a whole week with no explanation.  It was far from a one-off incident.  Eventually I threatened that if his parent did not come to see me, I would demote him to Primary 7 as he is losing too many lessons.  His aunt came and explained that John’s father is dead and his mother remarried, leaving her children behind.  This is a culturally acceptable situation here.  The aunt now cares for the children, but sometimes needs to go away to Juba.  When that happens, John is in charge.  The week that John was absent, he had to work to provide food for the younger children and himself in his aunt’s absence.  I have no solution to this type of problem.  Social services does not exist here.  As time goes on and poverty gets worse, this scenario is becoming ever more common.  I don’t know where it will end, but it does affect the academic progress of a good number of pupils.

Other than that, the first term went smoothly.  It is now the holidays.  Apart from the PLE exam results, the other major achievement was, of course, the advent of porridge.  We are still bathing in the luxury of being able to feed our children.  Thank you all so much.

End of term 1 for Alice, Lillian, Aluma and Paul 
(left to right)

I collected the deaf secondary students from school two weeks ago.  They seem happy and their first term results are very encouraging, especially Lillian, who got ‘outstanding’ for several subjects.  My main worry had been Aluma, because of his multiple disabilities, but he seems to have settled well, with no major fits.

This week I visited the deaf primary students and paid for next term’s needs.  They are doing well.

The blind children are also doing well.  I am especially happy about Mary, who has fetal alcohol syndrome.  She is repeating Primary 1 and is doing far better this time around.  Bernard has been a high achiever from day one last year, and continues on that course.

Alau, the eldest of my deaf contingent, has just finished his first term as a trainee teacher for the deaf at the deaf primary school.  The reason for taking this approach is that we have still not received his Senior 4 exam results.  Rather than holding him up for many months, it seemed more sensible to find an alternative training for him.  The school are very happy with him.  He is a keen student and makes sure he asks if he is uncertain of anything.  He is earning some extra money by teaching ‘remedial’ classes.  (I know – politically correct language does not exist here.)  Every Sunday he travels 25 kms from the school to Mbale to attend a deaf church, together with former friends from his old secondary school, so he is also getting some social and spiritual life.

The new civil war rumbles on in other parts of South Sudan, but is not affecting us directly.  The staff and I all take the attitude that we will be alert for news, but keep going in the meantime.  It would be a terrible shame to let our pupils down by closing unnecessarily.

Please feel free to contact me on rebeccamallinson1@gmail.com.  I am always happy to answer any questions or give more detail.