Back to the beginning...

Middle Class

Thursday morning was back to basics, spending the day in the nursery school – Esiteri Nursery, named after the local woman that donated the land for the site. Having primary school teacher parents, I spent many an hour sorting resources and helping in classes so it was interesting to see what happens in schools here. Nursery school here, ages 4 - 7, the classes are full with 25 - 30 children. However numbers are dropping in the junior classes so BRDC are working to understand this before committing to a new school building. 

There are quite the differences between the education system here and at home. 

• Uganda works in calendar years rather than academic years so as they’ve just had their long Christmas break through December and January, we’re right back at the start of a new year. 
• Parents pay school fees to go to private school rather than send them to the few and far between government schools, so if they can’t afford the fees - particularly for larger families - the children don’t go. 
• Moving up through the classes is on ability rather than age, so children don’t automatically move up a class each year.

Again, the children were pretty taken with having a ‘muzungu’ in class. There was a lot of handshaking, which I managed to graduate to high fives. Middle class is our equivalent of Reception so it was four-year olds learning letters, handwriting, drawing and colouring interspersed with singing songs about other general topics - days of the week, parts of the body, what to buy at market etc. The teacher was on her own in the class with 25 children so getting through the work was quite challenging with preparing the books, teaching the lesson, checking their work, managing the differing abilities as well as levels of concentration - even with my help checking their work and trying to keep some concentration! Its a world away from the resources and teaching assistants we have in primary schools at home.

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