Plans for a new Multimedia Block: Isaac Newton School is growing rapidly. School numbers are approaching 450 and the school has been struggling with a first year class of over 100 students. It is clear that to keep classes down to a reasonable (by Ugandan standards) class size of around 50, the school needs to add a second stream. In order to do this, the school must have additional classrooms and our intention is to help the school to improve the standard of teaching and learning through better building design.
Working with a local architect, the school has come up with a plan for a large new building that has 3 classrooms, an additional fully-equipped science lab with adjoining prep room, and a room where teachers can prepare material and undertake professional development, with a side room with a high-speed, low-cost RISO printer and secure storage for laptops and other equipment.
Senior 1 students trying to listen to their teacher, but with no pictures to aid their learning.
Uganda has an equatorial climate and is prone to heavy storms every 2 or 3 days. With existing classrooms, which have corrugated iron roofs, the noise of the rain is so loud that teaching has to stop during heavy rain. Also with larger classes students often find it difficult to hear what the teacher is saying or to see what is written on the chalk board.
In order to overcome these problems the new building has been designed with a sound-insulated ceiling, microphones and speakers to improve audibility and ceiling-hung data projectors so that high quality images can be projected onto a screen and teachers can take advantage of materials (including pictures, animations and videos) drawn from the internet. This mean that the teachers will be given access to the internet in the teacher development room and the whole building will have security doors and windows.
Once it is built, UHST will organise with the school a professional development programme to train all teachers in the use of the new technology and to show them how to embed audio-visual resources from the web into their lesson presentations. It will make possible a major shift in teaching away from the use of dictated notes. The training programme will be extended to teachers in the other Humanist Schools in Uganda who are members of Uganda Humanist Schools Association.
It will also complement other programmes in the schools to improve private study facilities for students. As Humanist schools, we feel that it is important to foster independent learning, where students are less reliant on being told things by teachers, and are empowered to learn using independent, authoritative sources of information. We have been flooding the Humanist schools with text books; we have also introduced a wide range of literature and a Reading for Pleasure Programme, the schools have a computer network with a wealth of off-line resources taken from the internet including: the huge RACHEL repository of non-fiction information taken from Wikipedia, the Khan Academy videos for mathematics and science, a large set of e-books, including classic literature, drawn from the Guttenberg collection and large numbers of videos, including Zefirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet”.
The total cost of the Multimedia Block and Large-Group Teaching Project at Isaac Newton School will be £42,268. We are applying to other charities for £25,000 of matching funding, but this will leave £17,268 to be raised from this appeal.
If you would be willing to help we would be most grateful to receive donations:
By bank transfer to: Uganda Humanist Schools Truspt, Lloyds Bank, Sort Code 30-95-91, Account 00455909 (please email to let us know so we can track the payment and send you a confirmation of receipt).
Or by cheque sent to: UHST, 31 Greenmeadows Road, Madeley, Crewe, CW3 9EY. If you are a UK taxpayer and would like us to clain Gift Aid, which boosts your donation by 25%, then please make sure you include your postal address and say that you are happy for us to claim Gift Aid.
If the appeal is successful it will enable a huge leap forward in the standard of education at Isaac Newton High School.
Friday 28th November was the last day of the school year at Mustard Seed School. Cooks were preparing the end of year staff party, and teachers and other workers were waiting to receive their end of year bonuses. This is one months pay provided by UHST to reward teachers for their loyalty to the school and to help them through the school vacation. Ugandan workers do not receive holiday pay. The introduction of the bonus, 3 years ago, has had a dramatic effect. Between 2015 and 2016 only two teachers left the school, both going back to university for further training; whereas, in earlier years, up to a quarter of staff failed to return after the long vacation. Sadly, on this occasion, the bonus was not to be.
UHST transferred the money, roughly £1,500, to Barclays branch in Jinja, Uganda. During the afternoon of November 28th Moses Kamya, the School’s Director, with a colleague Tedeo, collected the bonus money from the bank – 7 million Uganda shillings. Unfortunately, robbers, who must have seen them at the bank, lay in wait along the road. They placed a car across the road and stopped Moses’s vehicle. Moses was told to hand over the money and, to demonstrate their seriousness, they shot Tedeo in the arm with a Kalashnikov rifle. Naturally, at this point, Moses handed over all the money and the robbers fled from the scene.
Moses did what he could to stem the bleeding from Tedeo’s wound and then rushed him to hospital (see picture above). Fortunately, the bullet went through the flesh without shattering the bone and, after 3 days in hospital, Tedeo is now recovering at home. Although treatment in hospital is subsidised, they have been presented with a substantial bill for medicines and for board and lodging. After leaving the hospital, Moses spent hours at the police station filing a report on the incident (see picture of report below). The police hold out little hope of apprehending the gang of robbers. So, a key worker has a serious injury, there are hospital bills to pay and the school has lost its annual staff bonus from UHST.
Every month the school has to collect cash from the bank for staff salaries. Uganda is largely a cash economy so this is normal. Now the robbers know this is a regular occurrence Moses needs to find an alternative. He is trying to persuade all his teachers to open bank accounts so that, from the start of 2017, the school can pay salaries by direct transfer into their bank accounts.
For UHST, like all charities, money is scarce and we do not feel we can justify sending the same money twice, particularly as the same thing could happen again. We are, however, opening a fund so that supporters who wish to help can make donations to replace the bonus money and help the school in more general ways. If you would like to help Mustard Seed School pleased send a cheque made out to “Uganda Humanist Schools Trust” to: UHST, 31 Greenmeadows Road, Madeley Crewe, CW3 9EY (or use the donation form on our website: https://uhst.org/donate/).
It is such a pity that this has happened, because it shakes everyone’s confidence. Moses had just sent us a very up-beat report on the considerable progress the school has made over the past year (see Mustard Seed Directors Report for 2016). In the report, he shows that recruitment is buoyant, staff retention is high, they are making great strides in developing the Humanist Ethos of the school, boys and girls sporting achievements have been high, piped water is coming to the school, the school clinic is making a major contribution to the school and the community and the school has benefited from new computers and a high speed printer. The school management and staff can be proud of their achievements in 2016.
Hilary and I have just returned from Uganda, where we visited Isaac Newton High School and Mustard Seed School.
It was good to have time to have a good look around each school and to see that they are both progressing well.
We saw lessons in progress, spoke with scholarship and other students and with members of the teaching staff. In the picture, right, Peter Kisirinya, the Isaac Newton School Director, is leading a Physics practical class, where students are being shown how to construct electric circuits and measure resistance along them.
We also met the school nurses and were told about the work of the new health clinics in each school.
The picture left show the hustings in progress at Mustard Seed School for Head Girl and Head Boy and senior prefects. As the people selected have to represent students views to senior staff, they are selected in open democratic elections by the student body.
Full reports on the visit to each school can be downloaded from the links below:
Posted: December 14, 2016 by Steve Hurd
Appeal for Multimedia block and Large-group Teaching Project at Isaac Newton
Plans for a new Multimedia Block: Isaac Newton School is growing rapidly. School numbers are approaching 450 and the school has been struggling with a first year class of over 100 students. It is clear that to keep classes down to a reasonable (by Ugandan standards) class size of around 50, the school needs to add a second stream. In order to do this, the school must have additional classrooms and our intention is to help the school to improve the standard of teaching and learning through better building design.
Working with a local architect, the school has come up with a plan for a large new building that has 3 classrooms, an additional fully-equipped science lab with adjoining prep room, and a room where teachers can prepare material and undertake professional development, with a side room with a high-speed, low-cost RISO printer and secure storage for laptops and other equipment.
Uganda has an equatorial climate and is prone to heavy storms every 2 or 3 days. With existing classrooms, which have corrugated iron roofs, the noise of the rain is so loud that teaching has to stop during heavy rain. Also with larger classes students often find it difficult to hear what the teacher is saying or to see what is written on the chalk board.
In order to overcome these problems the new building has been designed with a sound-insulated ceiling, microphones and speakers to improve audibility and ceiling-hung data projectors so that high quality images can be projected onto a screen and teachers can take advantage of materials (including pictures, animations and videos) drawn from the internet. This mean that the teachers will be given access to the internet in the teacher development room and the whole building will have security doors and windows.
Once it is built, UHST will organise with the school a professional development programme to train all teachers in the use of the new technology and to show them how to embed audio-visual resources from the web into their lesson presentations. It will make possible a major shift in teaching away from the use of dictated notes. The training programme will be extended to teachers in the other Humanist Schools in Uganda who are members of Uganda Humanist Schools Association.
It will also complement other programmes in the schools to improve private study facilities for students. As Humanist schools, we feel that it is important to foster independent learning, where students are less reliant on being told things by teachers, and are empowered to learn using independent, authoritative sources of information. We have been flooding the Humanist schools with text books; we have also introduced a wide range of literature and a Reading for Pleasure Programme, the schools have a computer network with a wealth of off-line resources taken from the internet including: the huge RACHEL repository of non-fiction information taken from Wikipedia, the Khan Academy videos for mathematics and science, a large set of e-books, including classic literature, drawn from the Guttenberg collection and large numbers of videos, including Zefirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet”.
Click here to see the full plans.
The total cost of the Multimedia Block and Large-Group Teaching Project at Isaac Newton School will be £42,268. We are applying to other charities for £25,000 of matching funding, but this will leave £17,268 to be raised from this appeal.
If you would be willing to help we would be most grateful to receive donations:
By bank transfer to: Uganda Humanist Schools Truspt, Lloyds Bank, Sort Code 30-95-91, Account 00455909 (please email to let us know so we can track the payment and send you a confirmation of receipt).
By internet transfer via PayPal using the link: https://uhst.org/donate/make-a-donation/.
Or by cheque sent to: UHST, 31 Greenmeadows Road, Madeley, Crewe, CW3 9EY. If you are a UK taxpayer and would like us to clain Gift Aid, which boosts your donation by 25%, then please make sure you include your postal address and say that you are happy for us to claim Gift Aid.
If the appeal is successful it will enable a huge leap forward in the standard of education at Isaac Newton High School.
Posted: December 7, 2016 by Steve Hurd
Armed robbers steal Mustard Seed staff bonuses
UHST transferred the money, roughly £1,500, to Barclays branch in Jinja, Uganda. During the afternoon of November 28th Moses Kamya, the School’s Director, with a colleague Tedeo, collected the bonus money from the bank – 7 million Uganda shillings. Unfortunately, robbers, who must have seen them at the bank, lay in wait along the road. They placed a car across the road and stopped Moses’s vehicle. Moses was told to hand over the money and, to demonstrate their seriousness, they shot Tedeo in the arm with a Kalashnikov rifle. Naturally, at this point, Moses handed over all the money and the robbers fled from the scene.
Moses did what he could to stem the bleeding from Tedeo’s wound and then rushed him to hospital (see picture above). Fortunately, the bullet went through the flesh without shattering the bone and, after 3 days in hospital, Tedeo is now recovering at home. Although treatment in hospital is subsidised, they have been presented with a substantial bill for medicines and for board and lodging. After leaving the hospital, Moses spent hours at the police station filing a report on the incident (see picture of report below). The police hold out little hope of apprehending the gang of robbers. So, a key worker has a serious injury, there are hospital bills to pay and the school has lost its annual staff bonus from UHST.
Every month the school has to collect cash from the bank for staff salaries. Uganda is largely a cash economy so this is normal. Now the robbers know this is a regular occurrence Moses needs to find an alternative. He is trying to persuade all his teachers to open bank accounts so that, from the start of 2017, the school can pay salaries by direct transfer into their bank accounts.
For UHST, like all charities, money is scarce and we do not feel we can justify sending the same money twice, particularly as the same thing could happen again. We are, however, opening a fund so that supporters who wish to help can make donations to replace the bonus money and help the school in more general ways. If you would like to help Mustard Seed School pleased send a cheque made out to “Uganda Humanist Schools Trust” to: UHST, 31 Greenmeadows Road, Madeley Crewe, CW3 9EY (or use the donation form on our website: https://uhst.org/donate/).
It is such a pity that this has happened, because it shakes everyone’s confidence. Moses had just sent us a very up-beat report on the considerable progress the school has made over the past year (see Mustard Seed Directors Report for 2016). In the report, he shows that recruitment is buoyant, staff retention is high, they are making great strides in developing the Humanist Ethos of the school, boys and girls sporting achievements have been high, piped water is coming to the school, the school clinic is making a major contribution to the school and the community and the school has benefited from new computers and a high speed printer. The school management and staff can be proud of their achievements in 2016.
Posted: July 28, 2016 by Steve Hurd
Visiting the schools in July
It was good to have time to have a good look around each school and to see that they are both progressing well.
We saw lessons in progress, spoke with scholarship and other students and with members of the teaching staff. In the picture, right, Peter Kisirinya, the Isaac Newton School Director, is leading a Physics practical class, where students are being shown how to construct electric circuits and measure resistance along them.
We also met the school nurses and were told about the work of the new health clinics in each school.
Full reports on the visit to each school can be downloaded from the links below:
Report on visit to Isaac Newton High School
Report on visit to Mustard Seed School