Jan 15

Written by:
1/15/2012 8:04 PM 

HABARI: NEWS JANUARY 2012
The school year in Kenya started well in the first week of January 2012 and students of Fr. Symon School for Nomads started reporting gradually. The reason for this was because the best day of the week for parents to bring the children back to school was the first day of the new year and there was the problem of public transportation and shopping for children. By the end of the week more than half of the children were back and teaching was going on. On January 9, 2012 we were expecting our new children and by the end of the week 23 out of 30 expected children had arrived and this is a good number. Our 8th graders are very happy with the desks and chairs that we shipped with the container; they are using them for the first time.
Prior to children reporting back the workers had reported after Christmas break and construction work was going on. Plastering of the new toilets and shower rooms is completed and they will be working on the trough and the floor. Some of the workers have been assigned to the pending completion of two units of teachers’ house. Roofing is underway and this will be followed by plastering and other jobs.
The school year goes with the calendar year and is divided into three terms, Term 1 runs from January to March, Term 2 from May to July and Term 3 from September to November. Primary school students normally vary in age from six to fifteen years. The reason for this is that children may start school at any age. A child will normally be expected to begin class one around age seven. I went to class one at the age of ten and was in a boarding school 100 miles away from my home. Recently after the introduction of free primary education in Kenya, children who had previously dropped out for lack of school fees returned to school and had to go back to the classes which they left. The frequency with which some children repeated one class also caused some of them to be in the same class with younger ones than they are. It is also reported that rural children from poorer households and with little educational background at home often have difficulty following the curriculum and so are held back regularly. It is not uncommon for a child to repeat a class (this practice has been discouraged).
Although Kenya is among the countries that eliminated school fees as a major obstacle to education, it is stated that other significant costs remain, including the cost of providing a school uniform for a child, meals, medications, textbooks and construction of buildings in public schools and all parents are expected to contribute equally. Among some tribes like the Maasai, the outdated female genital mutilation that sets girls for early marriages remains a major obstruction to girl-child education. Effects of drought and widespread household poverty have always exposed more girls than boys to issues of child labor as they seek to fend for water, pasture and food for their siblings at the expense of their education.
Most domestic problems are compounded by discriminative practices such as reluctance by some parents to invest in the education of their girls. Besides parents’ reluctance there is lack of proper sanitation facilities such as good toilets and sanitary towels that has also compromised girls’ school attendance and performance. These are some of the things I have asked our matron and parents, especially mothers to discuss and become informed on these problems and to find ways that will make the girls remain active for daily learning activities.
I will be visiting Kenya in February 2012 and one of the things I want to do is have a meeting with parents on the visiting day when most of them visit and find out from them how best we can help to educate them (parents) on some of the issues they need to know. We can have workshops or simple seminars with parents and students especially those in the graduating class.
Fr. Symon Ntaiyia