We provide each child with a free cooked meal at lunchtime every day. We grow all the fruit & veg on site ourselves, and cook nshima (maize meal) over charcoal in the open air.
Thanks to local and international supporters, we now have two small buses which collect and deliver children four times a day along the busy Mumbwa Road.
RELEVANT FACILITIES
Our school is next to Zambia’s main road to the west and close to several large communities of mud houses. Our simple buildings sit comfortably within our local community and are relevant to the people we serve.
Through generous friends and supporters, we now have four blocks which each contain two large classrooms. In the last few years, we’ve also built a science laboratory, dug a borehole, converted the head teacher’s house into an Early Years’ Unit and erected a sustainable toilet & shower block which is large enough to serve six hundred learners.
Since 2020, we’ve also managed to buy over 3,400 of the most up-to-date textbooks, two afro-centric reading schemes to help our children learn to read fluently and over 1,000 afro-centric reading and reference books.
We’re aiming for self-sufficiency in food by developing a large market garden & livestock compound. As funds permit, we’re planting hundreds of fruit trees to provide future generations of learners with food and shade.
Like everyone else in our local community, we struggle for power. Last year, we installed solar power for our water pump, and, this February, we provided our school office with solar power. Wifi is many years away!
First class tuition
We have classes for every grade from pre-school through to Grade 12. We aim for up to 45 children in each class: this may seem many overseas, but our classes are half the size of most Zambian schools.
Because so many children start schooling late, or miss a few years before returning, there is an age range of six years in all our classes. This wide range requires specialist teaching skills, so all our teachers are well-trained and highly qualified, and we provide them with ongoing professional development. As a result, most teachers at other schools in the area try to send their own children to Mukwashi.
Our Early Years’ Unit is in its own fenced site – with a classroom, outdoor learning area, nap room, toilets, garden, play areas and football pitch.
We provide two full-time Catch Up Classes, with specialist literacy and numeracy teachers, for children who start schooling late, and a full-time Extra Class which provides additional learning in English, Maths & Science for Upper Primary learners seeking to be stretched.
We follow the Zambian curriculum closely in Primary School, but conduct all our lessons in English. In Lower Secondary, we offer all compulsory subjects plus computer studies (we share a computer room at another school). In Upper Secondary, our learners specialise in Agricultural Science and business subjects.
Our secondary subjects include:
English
Mathematics
Integrated Science
Agricultural Science
Computer Studies
Religious Education
Social Studies
Commerce Accounts
Physical Education
Business Studies
Civic Education
Our learners in Grades 10-12 follow the agricultural science pathway
In Zambia, in addition to core subjects like English, Maths, Social Studies and Integrated Science, every school must provide its learners with practical knowledge, skills and experience in one particular area — as their ‘pathway’ to subsequent training or employment.
Because we serve a mainly farming community, we decided Agricultural Science was the best pathway for our upper secondary learners.
We combine this with Business Studies, Accounts and Commerce to help them learn about agriculture as a genuine business and an important career.
This combination of Agriculture and Business subjects gives our learners the knowledge, skills and values every child in our rural locality needs to serve our community and help it prosper.
As part of the pathway, we provide experimental business and agriculture ‘labs’. All secondary learners work together to develop and operate a community shop as their own business, and they all share a plot of land with a friend where they conduct their own agricultural experiments.
They also learn by caring for the school’s banana plantation and orchard; and each grade cares for different animals in the livestock enclosure.
From left to right:
Twaambo graduated from teaching college, and works as an intern teaching English at a government secondary school. Nicholas is pursuing his passion for woodwork, and works with his brother’s company making and selling furniture. Nandipha works as a singer / songwriter, and is now a mother. Kenneth graduated as an agricultural engineer, and works for our landlord, Seedco. Diana is teaching English for a local US evangelical mission. Lazarous graduated with a business degree, and works for a Zambian company as their Stores’ Controller. Mweetwa works as a consultant water engineer. And Kadija works with her husband running their family farm, and now has two children.