We were delighted, recently, to appoint a new Agricultural Science teacher to our staff team.
We recruited Mr Abbishy Chisenga from another school in our province, and he is already grasped our unique approach and has started to make a significant contribution to our agricultural work.
Over the past month, we’ve held our second annual poetry competition jointly with King Edwards School, Birmingham, UK. This year, the theme was ‘dreams‘.
Once again, we judged the King Edwards’ students entries and our colleagues in Birmingham judged our learners’ entries.
This year, the KES staff selected Tembo Christopher, in Grade 11, as our overall winner – and he was presented with his prize by Ms Mwanamwambwa and Ms Sakuwaha.
Here is Tembo’s prize-winning poem.
In Stage Three, we are refurbishing and up-grading our existing block of four small two-bedroom homes.
We are making major internal structural adjustments to make better use of the space, and we are replumbing, rewiring, installing solar and bringing them up to the same standard of ‘improved living’ as the new homes in Stages One and Two.
We completed the first of the four homes during March, and are now working on the other three at the same time and hope to complete them by the end of May.
It was Grade 9’s turn this half-term to visit one of our local compounds where the community live in houses they have made from mud – to read to the children and adults who live there.
Our learners use the ‘African Storybook’ books we print and bind ourselves as these reflect local life and culture.
This activity always makes a big impression on our learners, as well as benefitting the community – especially all the children who currently have no chance of any formal education.
Our staff hope, one day, to be able to provide a proper free ‘pop up school’ class several times a week in the compounds – but we need to build a community library first!
Each year, we provide our ‘bursary learners’ with a new pair of good quality, hard-wearing shoes: this makes a very big difference to them. We fund our ‘shoe day’ from the regular monthly donations of our overseas friends.
Our bursary learners all live locally with acute economic and social challenges: most have either lost their parents or their parents are unable to work.
Top quality shoes like these, which last the whole school year, cost, on average, £12 ($15 / €15) in Lusaka. This may seem a small amount overseas, but it’s a month’s salary in Zambia for a low-paid worker – which is why most of our children have never had a new pair of shoes.
Today was ‘shoe day’, the one day in the year when the school office turns into a shoe-fitting room – and disbelieving children leave with huge smiles on their faces.
Some generous gifts at Christmas meant we were able to commission a local carpenter to make 35 new chairs for our Early Years unit.
He used local hard wood – and here are three to see.
Gift & Luckwell, our drivers & maintenance staff, sealed and prepared them.
And then painted them in four colours so the children could work in groups. There was enough spare paint for them to paint the tables and poles as well.
When children started to return for the new school year, and our littlest learners were very excited to see them and sit on them.
Ours were not the only excited children. We gave all our old chairs to a community school which has no chairs, where all the children have to sit on the floor to learn – so this was a step forward for them too.
This year, we have been joined by Ms Racheal Chunga.
Racheal is a very impressive probationary teacher who has just qualified from Malcolm Moffat College of Education as a primary teacher.
For now, she will work mainly in our two catch up classes teaching our ‘late starters’.
This is a wonderful opportunity for Racheal at the start of her career, and we welcome her to the school and the staff team.
We were thrilled by our learners’ results in the 2024 national examinations.
87% of our Grade 7s passed and proceeded to secondary education – compared to an average of only 69% across all other schools.
91% of our Grade 9s gained their School Certificate and moved on to Upper Secondary education – when the national average was only 56%.
Huge congratulations to our staff and learners!
We began work on Stage Two at the end of July. This time we were building two three-bedroom family homes for senior staff, and our Headteacher and Deputy Head moved in during February.
We’ve tried to ensure these will be homes suitable for senior staff for many decades to come, and that they will help us with senior recruitment when that is needed.
The homes have solar lighting and solar geysers for washing & showering. Over the next month, we will landscape the outside with crushed stone paths and flower beds,
We started building our ‘improved living’ homes at the end of May and have now completed the first stage: two blocks containing nine studios for shared living by single teachers.
The teachers moved in at the beginning of term, and then endured our team of builders working around them for two months.
The new homes are a world away from the shacks the teachers used to have to rent: they now have ceilings, tiled floors, curtains, a gas hob, a modern bathroom – and solar lighting and hot water.
Here are a selection of photos showing the new homes – which should serve the school for at least fifty years.
