Once again the schooling system has surprised us as exam’s have finished but the children are sent to class with no teachers or work to do while they – we mean us – actually attempt to mark papers. Wilfred the DP tries to organise things and get the teachers motivated but is unsuccessful as they are constantly putting their heads down to rest and sleep.
One in particular turns up late, he arrives when we are about to go to our second breakfast for the day! After he fumbles around the teachers office for a bit attemping pathetically to help mark papers, lets say about ten, we then break for lunch and after this he decides it is time to go home! Josephs reasoning is that all his marking is done for the class he is teaching and has been graded-(This would be because the volunteers Jordan and Jax have marked it all). Grading or accessing the kid performance means that a random line is drawn between the kids performance deciding which children will be promoted to the next class and which will have to repeat their class again. On closer inspection of this grading by us we are puzzled at the results and Josephs conclusion. Their is only one mark difference between this red line of the top ten kids and below that one person is a difference of 13. Also his addition across the 7 subjects for two or three children is wrong and at least one of those kids should be moving up a class not repeating the year again. Joseph did not want to understand or explain our questions, his mind was on leaving school and going to the town centre in Ngong. (The rest of this story should be continued later).
We decided to take this to Wilfred (DP) who was not very happy from what we could tell as a heated discussion in Kiswalili with the other teachers began however we were told it was carelessness! As predicted by us the children were once again sent to class with nothing.
We know what your thinking “well do something about it!” – which is very hard as this is how the school is run and it’ll take more time to “take over the school”!
