Here is a report from Peter Kisirinya, Director of the Isaac Newton Humanist Schools in Uganda, on the first term of their new primary school.
Girl first in line at Isaac Newton Humanist Primary School
Background
Isaac Newton has been developing as a Humanist High School since 2005 and we have been ready, for some time, to extend inclusive education based on reason, compassion and tolerance to local primary-age children. The Covid pandemic, which forced the closure of so many schools, presented an opportunity for us to take over a nearby Pentecostalist school, which had failed for several reasons:
It alienated local people by forcing children and their teachers to subscribe to a particularly intolerant form of Christianity.
Pupil numbers declined as parents saw indoctrination, mistreatment of their children and generally low standards of education and welfare.
Many teachers were unqualified and failed to cooperate with parents in matters concerning the education of their children.
The school paid teachers poorly and had built-up long arrears of staff salaries.
There was a severe lack of learning space (buildings) and furniture and funds collected from parents to improve resources and facilities appeared to make no difference.
Changing to a Humanist School
Children who were about to sit their Primary Leaving Examination, were left high and dry when the Evangelical school closed in 2020. The school proprietor advertised the school for sale. Approaches to turn the school into a madrasa led the local community to turn to Isaac Newton Humanist High School, which they trusted, to come to the rescue. Immediately, we provided space where a teacher could work with the children to complete their studies ahead of the November examination. I discussed the situation with Uganda Humanist Schools Trust and they agreed to launch an appeal in the UK to raise funds to buy the failed primary school.
Fortunately, UHST’s supporters responded well to the appeal, and we were able to buy the school in April 2021 and to begin work on its much-needed refurbishment. Buying the school has meant a lot to the local children, their parents, teachers and the whole local community. Linked to the High School, the Humanist Primary School now offers:
Inclusive-secular education to local children from all backgrounds, with high standards of education and welfare.
All staff have secure employment. They feel valued and are paid in a timely manner.
While many of the original children stayed with the school, new children have come along now that school is seen to be welcoming to the entire community. Currently we have a total of 276 pupils, 150 girls and 126 boys.
School fees have been reduced to a fair level since the school is now run on not-for profit principles.
A new kindergarten section has been constructed and we now provide all-important early-age education from the age of 3.
UHST has already provided two large consignments of textbooks and other learning materials. We now have adequate textbooks, when there were very few in the old school.
UHST has provided re-usable sanitary towels to all menstruating girls. This was one of the factors that led to many girls dropping out of school.
We have recruited 8 additional qualified teachers, while retaining those staff who were suitably qualified and willing to accept the new Humanist ethos.
All decisions are now taken in an open way, with full consultation with teachers, parents and local authorities.
We have changed the system of discipline from one based on violence to one that emphasises empathy and guidance. Corporal punishment has been banned. We are running workshops to share nonviolent strategies for managing discipline. We are also holding workshops on Humanist School Ethos.
Adequate and appropriate types of furniture have been made and pupils feel much more comfortable in school.
UHST has provided funds for a new kitchen and the quality of school food has improved greatly.
Children and staff are much happier. Children like coming to school and indeed they say the school is a better place than their home. Many pupils can hardly find enough to eat at home and are pleading for the school to reopen earlier than planned for the second term.
Wider benefits to the Community
The community around the school has benefited both directly and indirectly from the school takeover.
The primary school has been connected to electricity, which was been brought into the village by the Humanist High School, with UHST funding.
Piped water has been extended from Isaac Newton High School to the primary school and community members around the school now have access safe water.
Local people are making extra income by letting rooms to teachers and staff from the primary school.
The primary school buys materials such as foodstuffs, firewood, construction materials from the locality, which further boosts local living standards.
The school staff boost the income of local transport services such as boda-boda (motorbike taxis).
The school building has been opened up to the local community for meetings and events.
Those pupils who could not afford an education are assisted by the school’s local bursary scheme.
Future needs
The school needs to recruit 4 more qualified teachers.
We need more housing for teachers.
We need a school hall for exams and other purposes.
To be viable in the longer term, the school needs to find ways to attract more children from further afield.
Children of all faiths learning together at Isaac Newton Humanist Primary School
The Humanist Schools in Uganda have learned that providing good food makes for happy students and staff who work well and play well. Schools prepare porridge for breakfast and full meals at lunch and evening time for hundreds of children every day. Traditionally, firewood is used to heat huge cooking pots (see picture below right), and many loads of timber must be brought to the schools each term from further and further afield. Wood fuel use by schools, homes and workplaces in Uganda is destroying woodlands and forests throughout the country, with serious implications for environmental sustainability, biodiversity and climate change. As timber gets ever scarcer, rising prices have a crippling effect on school budgets. In the Humanist Schools in Uganda, firewood is the third highest running expense after staff wages and school food.
Firewood for Mustard Seed kitchen, 2010
Temporary open-fire stove after storm destroys main kitchen at Mustard Seed School, 2022
One mission of the Humanist Schools is to give children a love of the natural world and produce a generation of environmentally aware and responsible citizens. In the past three years, our schools have engaged children in tree planting to capture carbon dioxide and combat global warming. Uganda Humanist Schools Trust has also raised funds to enable the schools to move away from cooking on open fires. We have provided funds to equip every school with wood burning stoves, which burn wood more efficiently (reducing peripheral heat loss) and are externally vented so the cook does not have to breath in the smoke-filled air. Below are older and newer examples of such stoves.
New wood-stove kitchen at Kanungu Humanist Primary School, 2021
Modern wood-stoves at new Mustard Seed Humanist Primary School, 2022
Replacement of open fires with wood-burning stoves has cut wood use by over two-thirds. Even so, sourcing logs for cooking remains a major problem and significant cost for the Humanist Schools. Our high schools, with up to 600 children, consume up to 26 lorry loads of firewood every year. The smaller primary schools with 120-350 children use 12 to 18 loads a year. The amount they spend on firewood varies from school to school according to the proximity of timber resources. The new and still small primary school at Kanungu has good local sources of timber but still spends between £500 and £750 a year. Isaac Newton School, which brings in timber from over 40 km away, spends £4,000 a year for the high school and a further £1,300 for the new primary school. This makes a substantial dent in the school budget. The Mustard Seed Schools are forced to buy firewood from unsustainable sources at ever greater distances from the school. Katumba School is in a heavily forested area of the Ruwenzori Mountains. They used to take timber from local forests and transport it to the school. Since the Uganda government has put preservation orders on large tracts of forest the school has had to pay high prices from local entrepreneurs who grow firewood as a crop.
UHST and the schools are trying hard to find ways to reduce the environmental and financial burden of using wood to fuel school kitchens. We are researching the issue and considering all options. Electric stoves seem to be an obvious clean solution, especially as Uganda uses hydropower from the River Nile. Unfortunately, to date, we have not found electric stoves with the capacity to turn out meals for 600 children 3 times a day. In any case, hydro power production in Uganda is not keeping pace with demand, so area blackouts are common. We have also considered solar power with battery storage, but the costs appear to be prohibitive.
Gas is another option using either bottled gas or biogas. Bottled gas is not well distributed in Uganda so securing regular supplies may be a problem and the costs are high. A promising alternative might be biogas. We have just learned of a German initiative to develop biogas using a digester linked to school latrines. We intend to explore this option further. The challenges are likely to be meeting the initial capital costs and ensuring that gas production is sufficiently reliable and of adequate volume for mass catering.
A final option we are considering is the purchase of land for each school to enable them to grow and harvest their own firewood in a sustainable way. Initial enquiries suggest that each school would need at least 4 acres of land, where suitable trees would be planted and coppiced. The price of such an amount of land might range from £5,000 to £14,000, according to the location of the school. If such land would grow the timber each school needs, then it should quickly pay for itself.
Eliminating dependency on firewood for cooking is crucial for school finances as well as for maintaining a decent natural environment for future generations. We intend to work with the schools to find sustainable solutions. If any readers have expertise in this area, we would love to hear from you.
The equatorial heat of Uganda generates strong updrafts of air. Thunderstorms are a frequent occurrence, particularly around the equinoxes, when the sun passes over the equator. Having large water bodies, like Lake Victoria, and being high above sea level – the Ruwenzori mountains in the west rise to 15,000 feet – makes matters worse. Kampala has more lightning strikes than any other city in the world. Over the whole country there are an average of 70 lightning strikes on every square kilometre of land each year.
Fortunately, although frightening, deaths from lightning are still comparatively rare. A recent UNESCO document reported that in the 15 years since 2007 191 people have been killed and 727 injured in Uganda. However, it makes the headlines whenever lightning strikes schools and causes death. For example, in 2011 lightning killed 18 children and a teacher in a primary school in a hilly district 160 miles west of Kampala. A further 10 children were killed in 2020 in Arua in north-west Uganda after retreating from a football pitch to an isolated grass-roofed shelter, which was struck. Just a few weeks ago 3 children died and others were injured when lightning struck at a new Humanist primary school in the foothills of the Ruwenzori Mountains, near Kasese, in the west of Uganda. Such events invite local people to conclude that God may be wreaking his vengeance on a secular school.
As a result of global heating, storms are becoming more powerful and lightning ever more common. Although the chance of a particular school being hit by lightning is small, there is an expectation from government and communities that schools take steps to protect children and teachers. It poses a genuine dilemma for the Humanist Schools. We want to be seen to be doing something that will make a difference and yet we cannot afford to spend huge amounts fitting lightning conductors on every building. The Humanist High Schools each have well over 10 separate buildings to protect.
Schools belonging to Uganda Humanist Schools Association have been discussing the issue and guidelines have been circulated on what to do during a lightning storm. These include measures, such as:
Avoid standing in open spaces, on exposed hill tops or next to water bodies (come off the sports field and shelter indoors and not under an isolated tree).
If you are in the open, squat down as low as possible, with only your shoes in contact with the ground.
Turn off and unplug all electrical equipment and lights; and don’t use mobile phones.
Keep away from metal surfaces – don’t touch the metal frame of a dormitory bed, don’t stand in a metal doorway of a classroom to watch the storm.
It is widely believed in Uganda that tall trees can be used to deflect lightning from buildings. The Humanist Schools have been planting small stands of tall eucalyptus trees to perform this function. Eucalyptus trees are combustible, and lightning can arc from them to the buildings, so the schools know not to plant trees too close to classrooms.
A further obvious measure is to install lightning conductors on school buildings. The Ministry of Education has a scheme to promote this. However, it is not without problems. Lightning protection varies in cost and effectiveness from £750 to £2,500 for an individual building and tens of thousands to protect a whole school. Copper conductors are also subject to theft. However, no system provides 100% protection. Isaac Newton High School has been approached by a telecommunications company to install a mobile-phone mast in the school grounds. They have been informed that the mast’s lightning system will protect the school. This seems a good solution, if it happens.
At UHST we have a dilemma. Should we spend scarce resources that we need to improve education and welfare in the schools on protecting schools from an event that is unlikely to happen? This is the classic insurance dilemma and the reason why so few poor people buy insurance. We have been talking with a US-based NGO that specialises in designing lightning protection systems for schools in Africa (African Centres for Lightning and Electromagnetics Network). A possible way forward for our schools would be to protect one large building as a lightning refuge that children could retreat to in times of storms. If a school has a hall, then that would be an obvious place to protect, otherwise a large classroom block. If we went for this solution, then we would need to raise around £3,500 per school (£21,000 in total). This would provide a degree of protection against an unlikely event and families of children in the schools would appreciate that we had made the effort. Certainly, the human and reputational damage from having children in one our Humanist Schools injured or killed in a lightning strike would be huge. However, given all the other essential educational and welfare needs of the schools it is hard to make it the number one priority. If any of our supporters knows about lightning protection, we are very much open to advice on this.
Posted: April 14, 2022 by Steve Hurd
Exclusive Evangelical School goes Inclusively Humanist
Here is a report from Peter Kisirinya, Director of the Isaac Newton Humanist Schools in Uganda, on the first term of their new primary school.
Background
Isaac Newton has been developing as a Humanist High School since 2005 and we have been ready, for some time, to extend inclusive education based on reason, compassion and tolerance to local primary-age children. The Covid pandemic, which forced the closure of so many schools, presented an opportunity for us to take over a nearby Pentecostalist school, which had failed for several reasons:
Changing to a Humanist School
Children who were about to sit their Primary Leaving Examination, were left high and dry when the Evangelical school closed in 2020. The school proprietor advertised the school for sale. Approaches to turn the school into a madrasa led the local community to turn to Isaac Newton Humanist High School, which they trusted, to come to the rescue. Immediately, we provided space where a teacher could work with the children to complete their studies ahead of the November examination. I discussed the situation with Uganda Humanist Schools Trust and they agreed to launch an appeal in the UK to raise funds to buy the failed primary school.
Fortunately, UHST’s supporters responded well to the appeal, and we were able to buy the school in April 2021 and to begin work on its much-needed refurbishment. Buying the school has meant a lot to the local children, their parents, teachers and the whole local community. Linked to the High School, the Humanist Primary School now offers:
Children and staff are much happier. Children like coming to school and indeed they say the school is a better place than their home. Many pupils can hardly find enough to eat at home and are pleading for the school to reopen earlier than planned for the second term.
Wider benefits to the Community
The community around the school has benefited both directly and indirectly from the school takeover.
Future needs
Posted: March 18, 2022 by Steve Hurd
Ending firewood dependence in African schools
The Humanist Schools in Uganda have learned that providing good food makes for happy students and staff who work well and play well. Schools prepare porridge for breakfast and full meals at lunch and evening time for hundreds of children every day. Traditionally, firewood is used to heat huge cooking pots (see picture below right), and many loads of timber must be brought to the schools each term from further and further afield. Wood fuel use by schools, homes and workplaces in Uganda is destroying woodlands and forests throughout the country, with serious implications for environmental sustainability, biodiversity and climate change. As timber gets ever scarcer, rising prices have a crippling effect on school budgets. In the Humanist Schools in Uganda, firewood is the third highest running expense after staff wages and school food.
One mission of the Humanist Schools is to give children a love of the natural world and produce a generation of environmentally aware and responsible citizens. In the past three years, our schools have engaged children in tree planting to capture carbon dioxide and combat global warming. Uganda Humanist Schools Trust has also raised funds to enable the schools to move away from cooking on open fires. We have provided funds to equip every school with wood burning stoves, which burn wood more efficiently (reducing peripheral heat loss) and are externally vented so the cook does not have to breath in the smoke-filled air. Below are older and newer examples of such stoves.
Kanungu Humanist Primary School, 2021
Mustard Seed Humanist Primary School, 2022
Replacement of open fires with wood-burning stoves has cut wood use by over two-thirds. Even so, sourcing logs for cooking remains a major problem and significant cost for the Humanist Schools. Our high schools, with up to 600 children, consume up to 26 lorry loads of firewood every year. The smaller primary schools with 120-350 children use 12 to 18 loads a year. The amount they spend on firewood varies from school to school according to the proximity of timber resources. The new and still small primary school at Kanungu has good local sources of timber but still spends between £500 and £750 a year. Isaac Newton School, which brings in timber from over 40 km away, spends £4,000 a year for the high school and a further £1,300 for the new primary school. This makes a substantial dent in the school budget. The Mustard Seed Schools are forced to buy firewood from unsustainable sources at ever greater distances from the school. Katumba School is in a heavily forested area of the Ruwenzori Mountains. They used to take timber from local forests and transport it to the school. Since the Uganda government has put preservation orders on large tracts of forest the school has had to pay high prices from local entrepreneurs who grow firewood as a crop.
UHST and the schools are trying hard to find ways to reduce the environmental and financial burden of using wood to fuel school kitchens. We are researching the issue and considering all options. Electric stoves seem to be an obvious clean solution, especially as Uganda uses hydropower from the River Nile. Unfortunately, to date, we have not found electric stoves with the capacity to turn out meals for 600 children 3 times a day. In any case, hydro power production in Uganda is not keeping pace with demand, so area blackouts are common. We have also considered solar power with battery storage, but the costs appear to be prohibitive.
Gas is another option using either bottled gas or biogas. Bottled gas is not well distributed in Uganda so securing regular supplies may be a problem and the costs are high. A promising alternative might be biogas. We have just learned of a German initiative to develop biogas using a digester linked to school latrines. We intend to explore this option further. The challenges are likely to be meeting the initial capital costs and ensuring that gas production is sufficiently reliable and of adequate volume for mass catering.
A final option we are considering is the purchase of land for each school to enable them to grow and harvest their own firewood in a sustainable way. Initial enquiries suggest that each school would need at least 4 acres of land, where suitable trees would be planted and coppiced. The price of such an amount of land might range from £5,000 to £14,000, according to the location of the school. If such land would grow the timber each school needs, then it should quickly pay for itself.
Eliminating dependency on firewood for cooking is crucial for school finances as well as for maintaining a decent natural environment for future generations. We intend to work with the schools to find sustainable solutions. If any readers have expertise in this area, we would love to hear from you.
Posted: March 15, 2022 by Steve Hurd
Lightning dilemma
The equatorial heat of Uganda generates strong updrafts of air. Thunderstorms are a frequent occurrence, particularly around the equinoxes, when the sun passes over the equator. Having large water bodies, like Lake Victoria, and being high above sea level – the Ruwenzori mountains in the west rise to 15,000 feet – makes matters worse. Kampala has more lightning strikes than any other city in the world. Over the whole country there are an average of 70 lightning strikes on every square kilometre of land each year.
Fortunately, although frightening, deaths from lightning are still comparatively rare. A recent UNESCO document reported that in the 15 years since 2007 191 people have been killed and 727 injured in Uganda. However, it makes the headlines whenever lightning strikes schools and causes death. For example, in 2011 lightning killed 18 children and a teacher in a primary school in a hilly district 160 miles west of Kampala. A further 10 children were killed in 2020 in Arua in north-west Uganda after retreating from a football pitch to an isolated grass-roofed shelter, which was struck. Just a few weeks ago 3 children died and others were injured when lightning struck at a new Humanist primary school in the foothills of the Ruwenzori Mountains, near Kasese, in the west of Uganda. Such events invite local people to conclude that God may be wreaking his vengeance on a secular school.
As a result of global heating, storms are becoming more powerful and lightning ever more common. Although the chance of a particular school being hit by lightning is small, there is an expectation from government and communities that schools take steps to protect children and teachers. It poses a genuine dilemma for the Humanist Schools. We want to be seen to be doing something that will make a difference and yet we cannot afford to spend huge amounts fitting lightning conductors on every building. The Humanist High Schools each have well over 10 separate buildings to protect.
Schools belonging to Uganda Humanist Schools Association have been discussing the issue and guidelines have been circulated on what to do during a lightning storm. These include measures, such as:
It is widely believed in Uganda that tall trees can be used to deflect lightning from buildings. The Humanist Schools have been planting small stands of tall eucalyptus trees to perform this function. Eucalyptus trees are combustible, and lightning can arc from them to the buildings, so the schools know not to plant trees too close to classrooms.
A further obvious measure is to install lightning conductors on school buildings. The Ministry of Education has a scheme to promote this. However, it is not without problems. Lightning protection varies in cost and effectiveness from £750 to £2,500 for an individual building and tens of thousands to protect a whole school. Copper conductors are also subject to theft. However, no system provides 100% protection. Isaac Newton High School has been approached by a telecommunications company to install a mobile-phone mast in the school grounds. They have been informed that the mast’s lightning system will protect the school. This seems a good solution, if it happens.
At UHST we have a dilemma. Should we spend scarce resources that we need to improve education and welfare in the schools on protecting schools from an event that is unlikely to happen? This is the classic insurance dilemma and the reason why so few poor people buy insurance. We have been talking with a US-based NGO that specialises in designing lightning protection systems for schools in Africa (African Centres for Lightning and Electromagnetics Network). A possible way forward for our schools would be to protect one large building as a lightning refuge that children could retreat to in times of storms. If a school has a hall, then that would be an obvious place to protect, otherwise a large classroom block. If we went for this solution, then we would need to raise around £3,500 per school (£21,000 in total). This would provide a degree of protection against an unlikely event and families of children in the schools would appreciate that we had made the effort. Certainly, the human and reputational damage from having children in one our Humanist Schools injured or killed in a lightning strike would be huge. However, given all the other essential educational and welfare needs of the schools it is hard to make it the number one priority. If any of our supporters knows about lightning protection, we are very much open to advice on this.