Ondati School

Ondati School was started in 2009, by 2011 there were about 100 students in three classes.  Next year when school restarts in January there will be a fourth class.  It is hoped that most of the girls in year 3 will progress to the final year – the new form is likely to be fully subscribed at 50 students as the school is gaining a very good reputation.

Half the girls are boarders – they live too far away to walk every day.  There is very little provision for secondary education for girls in the surrounding area.  The nearest mixed secondary school is still predominantly boys.

There are now 5 teachers – which seems a good proportion for 100 students - but they have to teach a very wide curriculum, the Kenyan school curriculum has a great many subjects.

The school is supported by UK charity called Teach a Man to Fish. Their ethos is to create self-sufficient schools so that student fees can be kept to a minimum and the students also learn to support themselves with life skills and business skills.  The model they use is to create businesses run by the schools that bring in sufficient income to enable the school to be self-supporting. To find out more about them visit their website www.teachamantofish.org.uk

At Ondati they have a dairy business which is quite profitable and other projects which are still in development. There is a tree nursery, a pineapple plantation (just a patch really), several bee hives for honey, and a phone charging business run on solar power. There are a few more ideas in the planning stages.

There are 2 project officers here (Zoe and Samina) – they have been here for several months – to assist the school building up the businesses. They support the principal with many aspects of the work here. Zoe was my main contact here before I came out, but they both work with the Principal and staff, and I will be working with them both.    

This morning was the last day at school so we had prizegiving and speeches.  When we arrived at the classroom the girls were singing enthusiastically, the speeches were interminable, with much “Appreciating” and clapping. Many girls were named and singled out – unfortunately, from an English point of view, the bottom 10 in each class got as much attention as the top 10 with a lecture on trying harder next term. The top 3 in each class got prizes. Then the girls who had contributed most to the projects got certificates and prizes.

After the students had dispersed I was supposed to be giving “class” to the teachers: the plan was that I would “teach them some Accountancy”.  In the end only 3 of the teachers came along, the Principal also arrived half-way through. I went through an example P&L account then looked in more detail at the “Cost of Sales” ie product costing.  Part of the reason for the session was to show the teachers how interactive classes usually are in England – the system in Kenya is very much rote-learning still.  I tried hard to get them to ask questions, join in with a discussion rather than just take notes.  I think it went OK, hard to tell, the culture is so different.

The teachers then joined us for a late lunch – the rice, potatoes and cabbage went down well but they were a bit suspicious of the scrambled egg that Samina had cooked.

The power and internet access here is really poor - not sure when the next update will be.