By Katy Allen | Director
Education East Africa Quarterly Report
UPDATE FROM KIGALI
August 2017
The schools have just closed for a two-week holiday. They open again on 14th August for the last term of the school year.
Our work with the teachers and, in turn, their work with the pupils, goes from strength to strength. We started work in a new school, Kibara primary school, and the English teachers there asked to see the work in one of our other project schools. We took four of Kibara’s teachers to Gikomero primary school to see English lessons with pupils in P1 and P3. The visiting teachers were extremely impressed, and noticed how much better the pupils in P1 were than those in P3 as a result of their learning from the NOEC books.
The teachers of English who use the NOEC books now understand the concept of the ‘flow’ of a lesson, and are aware of the stages of a lesson, and the need for change of activities in order to keep the young pupils interested. The activities laid out in the books themselves cater for much of this. However, the teachers are now using the materials to maximum benefit. One teacher was about to continue with an activity but suddenly noticed that his pupils were going ‘off task’, and so in a split second he changed the activity which enabled his pupils to regain interest with a new task. It is a delight to see the pupils responding, and showing their full understanding of the English they have learned. We have seen pupils correct their teacher if the teacher makes an inadvertent mistake!
The teachers are noticeably pleased with their own development in both teaching methods and their knowledge of English, and coupled with their pupils’ impressive progress we have an upward spiral of motivation and enjoyment. The final term of the school year will highlight the success of our work when the pupils do mock examinations and final year examinations.
We have continued to meet officials to spread the word about our work and its success. Next term we hope that some officials might find time to come to see for themselves the difference our work is making, and to talk to the teachers about how our books have helped them so much. One important set of meetings was with those in charge of pre-service teacher training and how we might get involved with the students who are training to be primary school teachers. These discussions continue. In the next few months we also hope to have serious discussions about the adoption of our books on a wider scale, and to that end we are preparing a proposal document. Damian, who joined us from the Rwanda Education Board, is more and more convinced that the NOEC books are the only answer to improve the teaching and learning of English in the primary schools, which is of such great importance as English is the medium of instruction in the upper years of primary and at all levels from there. There are also concerns in the teaching and learning of mother-tongue literacy and numeracy, and in order to assist with that we have been adapting our ‘Get Ready’ books for use in Rwanda. Those books are a two-year language-awareness course in order to motivate pupils to learn English whilst looking at their own language, and developing thinking skills. The translator who has adapted the books into Kinyarwanda, recently wrote in an email, ‘I do not think there has ever been such a beautifully designed book in our educational system, to the best of my knowledge as a learner and teacher. After working on the books I was not only culturally aware of some ways of living in Britain, America, Canada and Australia, but also after seeing the progression in the content from pronunciation into poetry, songs and acting as journalists reporting events, etc., I felt like going back to primary school to start afresh!’
So, we are pleased to be working in Rwanda with our team of dedicated teachers, and officials who are concerned about the improvements needed in primary education and who are willing to enter into serious discussions with us about the feasible solutions which we are offering.
Your donations are what makes all of this possible and what enables our work to continue. I wish you could meet the teachers and the pupils to see with your own eyes how they are benefiting from your generosity.
Thank you again for your wonderful support.
Many thanks indeed.
Katy Allen
Director
Katy@EducationEastAfrica.org
Education is the Passport to a Self-Sustaining Life
www.EducationEastAfrica.org
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