Thursday 4 June 2020

Homeschooling dreams

Home-schooling: the new norm for so many students at the moment, and who knows for how long.

I've not had much experience of what it all equates to here, but I'm guessing that the schools provide the resources, and if worksheets are expected to be done and you don't have a printer, presumably the school works out a way to get the worksheets to you?
I realise that this probably isn't working for every child, and it does require the child to want to learn, and the parents to want to support their children in learning, and both of those in themselves are huge areas of variability, but from what I hear (in my limited circles of movement and interaction), at least the schools are willing to try and help ensure that all children have access to educational resources and the wherewithal to get some 'school-work' done each day.

In Uganda it doesn't quite work like that - if you don't have access to a printer, or money to access a print-shop, then you can't get the worksheets printed and you don't do any school work. And as a result you fall behind the rest of your year group.
And given that all children in Uganda have to take an end of year exam to be promoted to the next class, falling behind, failing the exams and therefore extending the number of years in school, can be a costly obstacle and one that many students from low-income families fail to overcome.

The Ugandan government has just announced that schools will stay closed for several weeks yet, and so the schools have now started compiling packs of work for the children to do each week - providing they can get them printed.
Through CRED Foundation, we support 17 children to be able to attend mainstream school - but none of them are able to self-fund the printing of the worksheets, and are therefore in danger of falling behind their classmates.

So I was delighted when Miriam, who is a teacher in Acholi Quarters and a member of the ladies co-operative with which we work, messaged me yesterday to say that she is getting concerned that the children aren't doing any school work, and so are going to start falling behind.
Her idea is that she will get the worksheets printed for all the children, and then distribute them round to them so that they can work on them for a week. Then do it again for the following week. And so on until they go back to school.
What a star she is!

A wonderful idea - if we can raise the money.
It costs, on average, £9 to print the worksheets for all the subjects for each child per week.
And there are 17 children.
I'll let you do the maths!
And do let me know if you would like to contribute a little to the fund.


No comments:

Post a Comment