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Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!
Here we are at the beginning of school year 2012 and our Volunteer Project has been running 3 years. We have the PLE (Primary Leavers Exam) results and again we have consistently achieved higher than the National average. At every Pass Grade, Kyabirwa pupils achieved higher than the National average – yet we are a poor rural school – the group that performs less well, so you would expect us to have below average results.
At the ‘true’ pass level of Grades 1 – 3 our children scored 81.2% against the National result of 66.4%.
Nationally 13.6% of children had a total fail (U), we didn’t have any.
We did have 19% Grade 4 ‘Passes’ which is classified as a Pass, but as you can’t go on to Secondary School having only achieved that level we still count that as failed. Nationally there were 20% Grade 4 passes.
So by the realistic way we calculate it Kyabriwa Primary School had 19% ‘fails’ and Uganda had an average of 33.6%.
We are further analysing the results to discover the areas of weakness. When these are identified we will use this to inform our teaching. It would help us greatly to have volunteers who were prepared to help us with marking analysis. Analysis of common pupil errors would enable us to ‘teach to mistakes’. This is a good way to ensure full pupil understanding before moving on to the next topic. It’s a much sounder way of teaching than just moving on to the next topic, regardless. As you can imagine, with such large classes, marking alone is a mammoth task. Adding in analysis will prolong the duration of the marking process but is essential if we are to help pupils achieve even more. That’s why we need your help with this.
Our desire is to completely eliminate Grade 4 and U results. Although we do realise that this is perhaps a little unrealistic as, the world over there, there will always be some children who just can’t achieve at those higher levels but we owe it to our children to try!
We really want to thank all our volunteers of the past year and before because you help us in so many ways to achieve this success. From working at the school in whatever capacity to funding the daily porridge, building the extra rooms so that we can have smaller classes and a Library – you are all part of this success and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
The new Library is a wonderful addition. We hope by building up the supply of interesting and fun books we can stimulate our children to enjoy reading. If they read more, their English will be better and they will achieve more in life.
We look forward to the start of the school year with hope and determination in our hearts. Thank you again dear friends - you help to keep us strong. God bless you all including those who have yet to come to us.
Robinah Musakira, Moses Owino, all the Teachers, the Management Committee, the PTA and the Volunteer Project Committee
Now
we are at the beginning of 2011. We are about to start the new teaching
year and have just received the results of the Primary Leavers Exams
(PLE) for 2010.
The results are even better than last year. In
fact we have 10% more children passing the exams than last year - which
makes a 20% improvement in 2 years! We are so delighted. This means such
a lot to these children. They can't move on to secondary school unless
they achieve a Grade 3 or above. That's why although technically a Grade
4 is a pass, we count it in as a failure - nationally it is counted as a
pass. We only had 1 pupil who actually failed and 3 who achieved a
Grade 4 pass, but will have to repeat the year if they wish to try again
so that they can go on to secondary school the following year.
Technically Kyabirwa School had a 2.1% failure rate as opposed to the National rate of 11.6%.
At Grade 4 We had 6.25% against the National percentage of 11.51%.
Grade 3 Kyabirwa - 35.41% - National percentage - 21.43%
Grade 2 Kyabirwa - 56.25% - National percentage - 43.12%
This year, sadly, we did not have any pupils who achieved Grade 1. The National percentage was 8.24%
Some
National results weren't released due to some schools' results being
declared suspect - hence their numbers don't quite add up to 100%.
We
would like to sincerely thank all our volunteers for everything they
have done and some continue to do to help us raise standards at our
school. This year we will continue to try to improve the results
further. Our goal is for everyone to pass at Grades 1 - 3 so that they
can go to secondary school. We intend to target the slowest pupils by
asking teachers and volunteers to give them extra help after school to
specifically address those aspects they are finding difficult to
understand. So please come and help us do this!
Again, we
abundantly bless those who have helped us enable our children to achieve
these wonderful results and thank you from the bottoms of our hearts.
Robinah Musakira, Moses Owino, all the Teachers, the Management Committee, the PTA and the Volunteer Project Committee
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It's the end of 2009 and the first full year of our Volunteer Project.
We would like to thank all the wonderful people who have come here to us
to offer us their love, kindness, expertise and toil to improve the
lives of our children and teachers. You have given us contact with the
huge world outside our tiny community in a way that we would never have
thought possible. We never dreamed we would meet people from all over
the world. We never dreamed that we would have the opportunity to learn
so much about other cultures. We never dreamed that there were so many
people who wanted to help us. Now we know that there are thousands of
people who travel the world to help poor people like ourselves so that
we can lead full, healthy and happy lives. You have all been a great
blessing to us and because you live in our hearts and memories, even
though you have gone home you are still with us.
We have just
received the exam results for our P7 leavers. A simple way of expressing
it is that the results are 10% better than the previous year. We are
the only school in the sub county to have pupils who have achieved
Division 1 results, which two of our children did! So not only has the
previous decline been halted, but standards have been raised! We are
overjoyed! We know that the reason is because of our volunteers who have
improved everyone's morale and provided things for teachers to enable
them to teach better and water, food and girl's sanitation provisions
that make the children more able to attend school and learn effectively.
God bless you all and may your futures, and those of everyone you love, be filled with love, health and happiness.
Robinah
Musakira (Head Mistress), Moses Owino (Project Manager) and all the
teachers, children, PTA, School Governing Body, our cook and our night
watchman (the cook and watchman didn't have jobs before the project) thank you with all our hearts .
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