In Uganda, teachers’ pay is low and varies greatly among schools. In rural high schools, they earn little more than £75 a month. This covers the essentials for a family but is not enough to pay school fees for the teacher’s own children. So, most are forced to find additional sources of income.
Covid has made matters worse. During long periods of enforced closure private schools have had no incoming income. Most have left teachers to fend for themselves and, even then, a quarter with unsustainable debts have gone bankrupt.
The Humanist Schools have been the exception. Uganda Humanist Schools Trust and our supporters have worked hard over the past decade to raise the funds needed to establish these ground-breaking schools and we are determined to ensure that they survive the pandemic. Moses Kamya, the Director of the Mustard Seed Humanist School, says that without help from UHST his school would undoubtedly have gone under. Money from UHST supporters has paid for school security, ongoing utility bills and site maintenance.
When the adjacent Muslim school went bankrupt, a UHST appeal raised £27,000 to buy the school and for a comprehensive refurbishment to turn it into Mustard Seed Humanist Primary School. Plaster work, windows and doors have been repaired and repainted. New toilets and a fine new kitchen (see picture of school and kitchen) have been constructed. Moses reports: “The community is very happy to have a secular primary school in their area. 40 new children have already enrolled, and the remaining places are being taken up rapidly.”
The new Mustard Seed Humanist Primary School
State of the art efficient & clean wood burning stoves
The real challenge, however, has been to help school staff and students during closure periods. With help from UHST, teachers have been paid monthly allowances of £32 and casual staff and site workers have received regular food parcels. Moses points out that, because of this help and the knowledge that their jobs are secure, staff members have remained loyal to the school and to their students. They have been keen to take home-study packs to students’ homes, and to answer telephone requests for help.
Teachers have shown great ingenuity in finding ways to make up their loss of income. The vast majority have returned to their roots as subsistence farmers. They have been hoeing land to grow food and cash crops and raising livestock such as cattle, goats and chickens. Others have found work and income working as bricklayers on projects in school and elsewhere. A few have set up retail shops and become involved in other small trades. The pictures below show the range of ingenuity of our teachers in surviving the economic challenge of Covid.
Andrew Kyago supporting students’ home learning in Mathematics
Irene Viko our deputy headteacher has been making ends meet by running a village shop in the evenings
Simon Bogere our Humanist Counsellor has been hired as coach to our village football team. He is also a Humanist Celebrant.
Mr Nyago available in the school office to answer enquiries from parents
Saidat Mukasa our Economics & History teacher tilling the land to grow vegetables
Work on creating new Humanist primary schools from the ashes of bankrupt religious schools, is proceeding well.
Peter Kisirinya has been leading the refurbishment a former Evangelical school. Dirt floors have been concreted, doors and windows installed, walls plastered and painted; Blair toilets, a cookhouse and a kindergarten for pre-school children constructed. Other improvements include 4 x 10,000 litre tanks to capture rainwater from the roofs, electricity for power and lighting, and a surrounding wall to keep children safe. Over the last 6 months, Peter and his team of local builders have worked hard on the project. As we can see from the pictures, the primary school has been transformed.
Isaac Newton Humanist Primary School
Work on a new kindergarten will soon be finished and local parents are looking forward to having the first pre-school education in the area. We know from international research that pre-schooling makes a significant difference to how far children progress with their education and the level of their final outcomes.
Constructing furniture
The local community lobbied Peter to take over the failed primary school and to operate it as he does the Isaac Newton Humanist High School, which has gained great respect as the first Humanist School in the world. Peter says “local people are tired of organisations that run schools to indoctrinate children with one narrow-minded view of the world”. They like the Humanist philosophy which does not discriminate between children based on parental beliefs. They see that every child matters in Humanist schools and they foster open and enquiring minds with strong feelings of personal and community responsibility. Peter is delighted to see that parents who had taken their children away from the previous school, due to indoctrination and low educational standards, are now seeking admission to the Humanist school. In both the primary school and kindergarten there are more children wanting to join than places available. When the school reopens, children of Kateera will be able to benefit from an inclusive Humanist education based on reason, compassion and tolerance from the age of 3 to 19.
Peter aims to have Isaac Newton Humanist Primary School ready to take children as soon as the Uganda government considers it safe to do so. Schools were due to reopen two weeks ago but a new Covid surge led to the closure being extended. This has been a huge disappointment to staff, children and the whole community of Kateera. Peter reports, “They were all expecting the terribly challenging situation to come to an end soon but now feel devastated. Teachers had been working hard to prepare lessons for a restart in September. However, they are now turning their efforts to preparing scholastic materials to enable our children to learn from home. As children live within an easy walking distance of the school, teachers will deliver the materials directly to children’s homes. Home schooling will ensure some continuity of education between now and school reopening in January.”
Progress on the new Mustard Seed Humanist Primary School is also progressing. The owner of the former Muslim school only vacated the site in August, but early work on the school can be seen on Moses Kamya’s Facebook page:
Uganda Humanist Schools Trust receives income from both one-off and regular donations. Two-thirds of regular donations pay for scholarships, which enable bright but needy children to get a good education in the Humanist secondary schools. The rest is used to buy books and learning materials, to improve the welfare of students and teachers and to pay for small building works. From time-to-time we receive large donations in the thousands of pounds. We rely upon these to fund major building works in the schools. For example, individual donors have paid for boys’ and girls’ dormitories and other single buildings and donations from one donor have, over several years, funded the construction of an entirely new primary school for the strife torn community of Katumba, near the Congo border.
The Covid pandemic put severe strain on our resources. However, progress on building up the Humanist Schools has continued thanks to a successful appeal which raised £45,000 towards the purchase of two bankrupted primary schools. These are currently being refurbished to serve as Humanist feeder schools for Isaac Newton and Mustard Seed High Schools.
The receipt of money from the wills of dedicated Humanists who have sadly died in the past years has made a huge difference to UHST’s capacity to support the development of Humanist Schools in Uganda.
In October 2020, North London Humanists selected UHST to receive £35,000 from a legacy left in the will of Terry Mullins, one of their long-standing members.
Following discussions, the group decided that they would like the money to be used to help with two new Humanist Schools near the Congo border, Kanungu and Katumba Humanist Primary Schools. Both communities had tragic recent histories, in which hundreds of people had died in cult killings and the new schools are creating hope for better futures for the children and their families.
Kanungu (where 780 men, women and children were murdered in a church), has had money to build:
a Kindergarten with 3 rooms to provide pre-school education for 3–5-year-olds
2 classrooms for Primary 6 & 7 classes
School furniture
Katumba Parents Humanist Primary (where over 100 fathers were killed in a cult uprising) has been allocated funds:
To construct school furniture
To buy tanks and conduits for rainwater harvesting
Socially distanced children at Kanungu Humanist Primary School during Covid
This left £10,000 which has been used for a wide range of essentials across the Humanist Schools, including: play materials, books and learning resources, helping destitute families to pay school fees, and buying sanitary pads for the older girls and many other things. For example, an entirely new secondary curriculum reform has been implemented in Uganda, so funds were used to buy new textbooks and laboratory materials.
Thelma Taylor, who supported UHST from our first appeal in 2009, sadly died in March 2020. We received £15,000 from her estate in October 2020, and a further £43,750 in April 2021, when her house was sold. Thelma had no close relatives, so she chose to leave money to help Isaac Newton and Mustard Seed Schools, whose progress she had followed closely in the final years of her life.
The money she most generously left has made it possible to complete a new boarding house for needy boys who had been either walking long distances to and from school or sleeping in classrooms. The boarding house will make a huge difference to student welfare, by providing a safe place for needy boys to live, work and play. We know from experience over the past 12 years that when students have an opportunity to board their learning and exam results improve substantially.
Money from Thelma’s will has also enabled Isaac Newton School to construct a much-needed large multi-purpose hall. With 600 boys and girls in the school, they needed a large indoor space for dining, assemblies of all kinds, examinations, music, drama and debates, and for community meetings. This fine new building has effectively completed the infrastructure of the school.
New Hall at Isaac Newton School: work on dining tables with stage in background
Money from these two bequests has also helped us to relieve some of the stresses caused by Covid. They have provided funds for handwashing stations, disinfectant and for anti-mosquito paint, which enables classrooms to be used in the evenings for catch-up classes without exposing boys and girls to malaria.
Posted: October 19, 2021 by Steve Hurd
How teachers cope when schools close due to Covid
In Uganda, teachers’ pay is low and varies greatly among schools. In rural high schools, they earn little more than £75 a month. This covers the essentials for a family but is not enough to pay school fees for the teacher’s own children. So, most are forced to find additional sources of income.
Covid has made matters worse. During long periods of enforced closure private schools have had no incoming income. Most have left teachers to fend for themselves and, even then, a quarter with unsustainable debts have gone bankrupt.
The Humanist Schools have been the exception. Uganda Humanist Schools Trust and our supporters have worked hard over the past decade to raise the funds needed to establish these ground-breaking schools and we are determined to ensure that they survive the pandemic. Moses Kamya, the Director of the Mustard Seed Humanist School, says that without help from UHST his school would undoubtedly have gone under. Money from UHST supporters has paid for school security, ongoing utility bills and site maintenance.
When the adjacent Muslim school went bankrupt, a UHST appeal raised £27,000 to buy the school and for a comprehensive refurbishment to turn it into Mustard Seed Humanist Primary School. Plaster work, windows and doors have been repaired and repainted. New toilets and a fine new kitchen (see picture of school and kitchen) have been constructed. Moses reports: “The community is very happy to have a secular primary school in their area. 40 new children have already enrolled, and the remaining places are being taken up rapidly.”
The real challenge, however, has been to help school staff and students during closure periods. With help from UHST, teachers have been paid monthly allowances of £32 and casual staff and site workers have received regular food parcels. Moses points out that, because of this help and the knowledge that their jobs are secure, staff members have remained loyal to the school and to their students. They have been keen to take home-study packs to students’ homes, and to answer telephone requests for help.
Teachers have shown great ingenuity in finding ways to make up their loss of income. The vast majority have returned to their roots as subsistence farmers. They have been hoeing land to grow food and cash crops and raising livestock such as cattle, goats and chickens. Others have found work and income working as bricklayers on projects in school and elsewhere. A few have set up retail shops and become involved in other small trades. The pictures below show the range of ingenuity of our teachers in surviving the economic challenge of Covid.
home learning in Mathematics
Posted: October 9, 2021 by Steve Hurd
Phoenix arises from the ashes
Work on creating new Humanist primary schools from the ashes of bankrupt religious schools, is proceeding well.
Peter Kisirinya has been leading the refurbishment a former Evangelical school. Dirt floors have been concreted, doors and windows installed, walls plastered and painted; Blair toilets, a cookhouse and a kindergarten for pre-school children constructed. Other improvements include 4 x 10,000 litre tanks to capture rainwater from the roofs, electricity for power and lighting, and a surrounding wall to keep children safe. Over the last 6 months, Peter and his team of local builders have worked hard on the project. As we can see from the pictures, the primary school has been transformed.
Work on a new kindergarten will soon be finished and local parents are looking forward to having the first pre-school education in the area. We know from international research that pre-schooling makes a significant difference to how far children progress with their education and the level of their final outcomes.
The local community lobbied Peter to take over the failed primary school and to operate it as he does the Isaac Newton Humanist High School, which has gained great respect as the first Humanist School in the world. Peter says “local people are tired of organisations that run schools to indoctrinate children with one narrow-minded view of the world”. They like the Humanist philosophy which does not discriminate between children based on parental beliefs. They see that every child matters in Humanist schools and they foster open and enquiring minds with strong feelings of personal and community responsibility. Peter is delighted to see that parents who had taken their children away from the previous school, due to indoctrination and low educational standards, are now seeking admission to the Humanist school. In both the primary school and kindergarten there are more children wanting to join than places available. When the school reopens, children of Kateera will be able to benefit from an inclusive Humanist education based on reason, compassion and tolerance from the age of 3 to 19.
Peter aims to have Isaac Newton Humanist Primary School ready to take children as soon as the Uganda government considers it safe to do so. Schools were due to reopen two weeks ago but a new Covid surge led to the closure being extended. This has been a huge disappointment to staff, children and the whole community of Kateera. Peter reports, “They were all expecting the terribly challenging situation to come to an end soon but now feel devastated. Teachers had been working hard to prepare lessons for a restart in September. However, they are now turning their efforts to preparing scholastic materials to enable our children to learn from home. As children live within an easy walking distance of the school, teachers will deliver the materials directly to children’s homes. Home schooling will ensure some continuity of education between now and school reopening in January.”
Progress on the new Mustard Seed Humanist Primary School is also progressing. The owner of the former Muslim school only vacated the site in August, but early work on the school can be seen on Moses Kamya’s Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2728936474072186&id=1458903557742157
Posted: September 6, 2021 by Steve Hurd
Recent bequests have made a huge difference
Uganda Humanist Schools Trust receives income from both one-off and regular donations. Two-thirds of regular donations pay for scholarships, which enable bright but needy children to get a good education in the Humanist secondary schools. The rest is used to buy books and learning materials, to improve the welfare of students and teachers and to pay for small building works. From time-to-time we receive large donations in the thousands of pounds. We rely upon these to fund major building works in the schools. For example, individual donors have paid for boys’ and girls’ dormitories and other single buildings and donations from one donor have, over several years, funded the construction of an entirely new primary school for the strife torn community of Katumba, near the Congo border.
The Covid pandemic put severe strain on our resources. However, progress on building up the Humanist Schools has continued thanks to a successful appeal which raised £45,000 towards the purchase of two bankrupted primary schools. These are currently being refurbished to serve as Humanist feeder schools for Isaac Newton and Mustard Seed High Schools.
The receipt of money from the wills of dedicated Humanists who have sadly died in the past years has made a huge difference to UHST’s capacity to support the development of Humanist Schools in Uganda.
In October 2020, North London Humanists selected UHST to receive £35,000 from a legacy left in the will of Terry Mullins, one of their long-standing members.
Following discussions, the group decided that they would like the money to be used to help with two new Humanist Schools near the Congo border, Kanungu and Katumba Humanist Primary Schools. Both communities had tragic recent histories, in which hundreds of people had died in cult killings and the new schools are creating hope for better futures for the children and their families.
Kanungu (where 780 men, women and children were murdered in a church), has had money to build:
Katumba Parents Humanist Primary (where over 100 fathers were killed in a cult uprising) has been allocated funds:
This left £10,000 which has been used for a wide range of essentials across the Humanist Schools, including: play materials, books and learning resources, helping destitute families to pay school fees, and buying sanitary pads for the older girls and many other things. For example, an entirely new secondary curriculum reform has been implemented in Uganda, so funds were used to buy new textbooks and laboratory materials.
Thelma Taylor, who supported UHST from our first appeal in 2009, sadly died in March 2020. We received £15,000 from her estate in October 2020, and a further £43,750 in April 2021, when her house was sold. Thelma had no close relatives, so she chose to leave money to help Isaac Newton and Mustard Seed Schools, whose progress she had followed closely in the final years of her life.
The money she most generously left has made it possible to complete a new boarding house for needy boys who had been either walking long distances to and from school or sleeping in classrooms. The boarding house will make a huge difference to student welfare, by providing a safe place for needy boys to live, work and play. We know from experience over the past 12 years that when students have an opportunity to board their learning and exam results improve substantially.
Money from Thelma’s will has also enabled Isaac Newton School to construct a much-needed large multi-purpose hall. With 600 boys and girls in the school, they needed a large indoor space for dining, assemblies of all kinds, examinations, music, drama and debates, and for community meetings. This fine new building has effectively completed the infrastructure of the school.
Money from these two bequests has also helped us to relieve some of the stresses caused by Covid. They have provided funds for handwashing stations, disinfectant and for anti-mosquito paint, which enables classrooms to be used in the evenings for catch-up classes without exposing boys and girls to malaria.
You can find out more about bequests to UHST in this link: https://ugandahumanistschoolstrust.org/donate/making-a-bequest/.