Cranleigh School's Visit to Kawama

Last year I completed my Masters dissertation with Beyond Oursleves. My project explored the reasons for absenteeism at Kawama Community School. This may seem like an odd topic. Surely children who don't have the same educational opportunities as we do in the UK would be grateful for even the chance to attend school?

Well, generally speaking they are but there are many factors that affect a child's attendance and whilst my research was based at one particular school, many of these factors are common to children across the world; factors such as limited financial means, the quality of education provided, illness, hunger, menstruation, weather and the need to work. Absenteeism is clearly a multi-dimensional problem which has its roots in income property, social deprivation and entrenched cultural and gender norms.  Having just returned from a trip to Kawama, I was reminded of the extent of the progress that has been made in tackling some of these deeply complex issues.

All three schools that Beyond Ourselves partners with provide genuinely affordable education, unlike the government schools where there are often hidden costs such as administration and resource fees that are beyond the means of many poorer families. This ensures that many children in Kawama who could not afford to go to the government school are able to attend school. The feeding programme ensures the children receive at least one nutritious meal a day and are therefore able to concentrate and participate more fully in school and thus learning outcomes are improved. Sanitation has also been improved with good quality toilets now up and running.

Ultimately, however, children and their carers need to see a point in going to school. Why pursue education when it's unclear how that education will benefit you or your family? This is the reason why, alongside meeting basic needs, there is a real focus on improving the quality of education at the schools and the results are already being seen. Class sizes have been reduced with the aim of bringing all classes down to 40 or below. 

At Kawama School last year's Grade 7s achieved a 73% pass rate in the end of year exams that determine their entrance to secondary school, compared with a national average of 63%. During this trip we also saw the Reception and Baby class learning through play in a way that we have not seen before. We were genuinely moved to see the young children building towers, tackling puzzles and engaged in role-play, learning skills that will so significantly benefit their later education but also enjoying themselves so much!

The teachers at Kawama encourage the children and their families to value education and to understand the long-term benefits of completing their schooling. This is no easy task in a community that, through necessity, has had to focus on their immediate needs rather than planning for the future but the teachers know the importance of this message and I've no doubt that their commitment to meeting basic needs and providing a high quality and relevant education will encourage the children to value their schooling and work towards a better future.

By Becs Gibson, a teacher at Cranleigh School. 

My First Two Months in Zambia - Supporting the Early Years at Kawama

Although Mike and I have been in Zambia since June, I only started working officially with Beyond Ourselves in September. Having recently taken early retirement from being a headteacher in London, I was pleased to be asked to focus this term on developing the Pre School Education at Kawama.  From the visits I had made to the school earlier in the year, it was obvious how far the school and the teachers had come in their journey with the help of Beyond Ourselves. The youngest children are in school from 7 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, which might seem like a long day to those of us used to education in England, but it means that the children are safe and being looked after, allowing their parents to go out to work or siblings to attend school. The classes are small for Zambia, with 29 children in the Nursery and 20 in Reception.  Each class has it’s own teacher but no other adult support. The children are taught in the Church hall, which has the advantage of having lots of space, but also means that everything has to be packed up then cleared away to the staff room at the end of the day, only to be collected and brought out again the next morning. There are very few resources for the teachers or children to use as learning aids compared to what we are used to in the UK.

Teacher Annie

Teacher Florence

The two teachers have been incredibly welcoming to me and open to trying out new ideas. Having observed the classes for a few days, I talked to them both about the concept of ‘Learning through Play’, which is not common in most schools in Zambia. The first major change we made was to set aside the afternoons for group work and play sessions. Luckily Beyond Ourselves had some resources like Lego and stickle bricks for construction as well as plastic play food and child sized pots and pans, which along with searching out resources at the local supermarkets for plastic cups and plates meant the children could play at being ‘mums and dads’.

At first, the children were unsure how to play with the resources, particularly some of the building blocks we had introduced. Once we had shown them what fun it was to build a tower and then knock it down, they caught on incredibly quickly and were soon competitive in building towers higher and higher then laughing when they fell over.

It is amazing to see how good even the youngest children are at using small blocks to build quite intricate structures, in lots of ways better than many children in Nursery classes in the UK. 

Most children quickly used the play food and pots and pans to pretend to cook and feed each other, and used the local colourful material called ‘chitenje’ to tie their new found dolls and cuddly toys as pretend babies to their backs exactly like they see their mothers and older siblings doing.  After a few days, as they became more confident and used to the resources, it was heart-warming to see how they were using their imagination and starting to play together. I had noticed to begin with that many of the boys would just hold on to pieces of lego or wooden bricks rather than playing with them. This appeared to be to stop other children snatching them from them.

However, after a few weeks, to my utter delight, I walked in one day to find a group had eventually agreed to share all the pieces of stickle bricks in order to make a large shared car, which they then enjoyed playing with. That moment in itself made me realise how change can have such a positive impact.

Once the children were able to play independently, I was able to support the teachers in working with a small group rather than the whole class, which was quite a new idea for them. The teachers were already using some excellent teaching strategies such as singing songs at the beginning of the lesson but I had noticed that the children spent a lot of time tracing and copying numbers and letters, which the teachers had written in their books.  Obviously this takes a very long time for the teacher to prepare, but not long for the children to complete. We cut up a sheet of thin plywood into A4 sized pieces, sanded them down and painted them with blackboard paint to make  some simple individual ‘mini blackboards’ so that each child could practice writing letters and numbers, rubbing out mistakes easily and getting lots more practice.  This has worked amazingly well well as it means the children are getting lots of practice without using lots of exercise books, which of course cost the families money. The rest of the classes have now seen these and they all want them. I am a great believer in using resources which are sustainable and can be bought locally as our aim is to help our partner schools to become more independent. 

I have learned so much from the teachers and children at Kawama which has been a great introduction to working with Beyond Ourselves and living in Zambia.

By Jan Atkins

Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon

Last weekend we had 15 amazing runners participating in the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon. It was a beautiful sunny morning and I suggested that they would all have a lovely scenic run round the Royal Parks in the sunshine. I was given a look of contempt as I was the one who would be standing around, drinking cups of coffee with a Beyond Ourselves flag sticking out of my back!!

All runners finished the course with no injuries and some really fast times.

A big thank you to Tim Tilley from Citi Group who, year after year, puts in a team of at least 10 runners, raises money for Beyond Ourselves and is such a great ambassador for us. 

Thank you Henry Bridgewood, Leandra Catton, Mike Slevin, Andrew Mulley, Caroline Maconachie, Witold Smolen, Chris Wilson, Tim Tilley, John Kane, Brett Racher, Jeremy Croal, Stuart Winny, Evette Brewster and Dan Wittred  for all your training and for raising over £5000 for Beyond Ourselves. We admire your stamina and really appreciate you supporting us in this way.

We have 2 places for the Brighton Marathon in April if anyone would like to step up to the challenge?

We've Come So Far

Arsen Wenger, not ordinarily known for philosophy, once commented on the biggest room in the world, surprisingly not the Arsenal trophy cabinet, but rather the room for improvement.

Sometimes it's hard not to feel overwhelmed at the journey ahead of us. Beyond Ourselves have been partnering with schools here in the Copperbelt of Zambia for the past 7 years and it can often feel like we've still got such a long way to go, so much 'room for improvement'.

This week I was invited along to visit another school to see what they are doing.

I was welcomed to a mud-brick church building in Kamatipa, a community close to our partner school in Kawama. The wooden doors opened and, without exception, everyone stared in my direction. 100 stoic eyes studied me before returning to their lessons. The dusty hall was partitioned by benches, with rows of children sat to face one of 6 dimly lit chalkboards around the hall - separated into their different grades. As I walked around, I was struck by how familiar a sight this was: Children leaning forward to write on the bench in front of them, the teacher using the only textbook they have as a 'teaching bible'. The six teachers, all volunteers, all unpaid, all unqualified. Our schools all started from similar beginnings.

I came away from my time at the school wondering what we could do to support this project (financially, we're not in a position to take on another school, another community, but there are still ways to honour the staff and their commitment to the children they teach, as well as help them to become more effective in their roles).

I also came away with a renewed perspective of just how far our schools have come and reminded that I need to be patient. We continue to dream big for our pupils, our schools, and the communities they are in, but it¹s also important to reflect on the journey we¹ve been on so far and the dreams we¹ve already seen fulfilled.

Senior Leadership Team Meeting

It is a rare and wonderful thing to have all of our school directors, head teachers and senior teachers together in one place.

At the start of this term we came together for a senior leadership meeting on ‘Developing a School Improvement plan’ and a great day was had by all. We learnt from each other – sharing thoughts, ideas and little pearls of wisdom about helping children achieve their best and the future of our schools. 

Our friends, who run a private school that uses UK teachers to team-teach and train Zambian teachers, had very kindly offered to host us for the day. So we spent the day there with our staff, seeing this school in action; which then paved the way for lots of constructive discussion.

Everybody got to spend some time watching good phonics lessons, seeing children “learning through play”, discussing what makes a successful lesson and consequently what makes a successful school.

The photos below give you a small snapshot of the day’s activities…

1. Here the headteachers and senior teachers are watching Fatima (a local teacher) teaching phonics to a group of Grade 2 children.

2. ‘Silly Soup’ games with Fatima showing how to teach phonics in a fun way. 

3. Headteacher Mary (Kawama) with senior teachers Ireen (Janna) and Maureen (Greater Joy) discussing the first phonics lesson they watched.  Later they shared their thoughts with the group telling us exactly why they thought the lesson was a success.

4. Emily getting some lessons on how to run a school in Zambia!

We all left that day feeling excited and ready to start the 3^rd term.

It has been great going into the schools after the training and seeing the head teachers sharing the school improvement plan with the rest of the staff; motivating and challenging them to be the best teachers they can be and supporting them in getting the best from the children they teach.

As we say in Zambia – “It has been a good exposure!” 

Dependent

Many of the children that come to our partner schools, don’t have parents. Some have passed away, other parents have left their children with relatives in search of jobs, money, or relationships. The children of these parents are often taken in by 'aunties' and 'uncles' or other family members. It is rare for a child to be totally abandoned. Family members are very good at taking in their relatives and giving them a home.

When a child comes into a family where the mum and dad are not their own, they become a ‘dependent’ of that couple, or that person. In Zambia, this is a very common occurrence. On government, legal or other official forms when one is asked about their family situation there will be a place to list your children, and then another list for your dependents.

Many families are quite large because of this. As you can imagine, this puts financial pressure on the carer, more mouths to feed, more bodies to clothe, needs that demand money that these carers often don’t have. Because of these pressures, and probably for cultural reasons I don’t yet understand, these dependents aren’t considered to have the same standing in a family as the parent’s natural born children.

 

Last week I had a conversation with one of the directors we work with about how the demands on a dependent in their home can be disproportionate and how, in some situations, the way they are treated is actually heartbreaking. In terms of education, many carers send their dependents to community schools like ours. They wouldn’t pay for their dependents to attend government school, so community schools are a good way to send a child to school and sadly for some, it’s way of getting rid of the child for the day

We have the privilege to work with these children in our schools and see them flourish. The teachers of the schools get to love on these children, remind them they are valued and cared for. From the amazing smiles that adorn the beautiful faces of the children at these schools, you’d never guess the struggles so many of them have. There is a strength inside these children that is remarkable. What a privilege to see Jesus at work every day, feeding, clothing, and educating nearly 1000 children through the staff at the schools we partner with.

It’s our prayer that those who are orphaned in the physical world would feel the love of God through the staff, and not feel like orphans in their hearts.

Beyond the Bike: The Next Revolution! (The warm up!)

The first stage of Beyond the Bike is complete!

On Saturday 5th September, Stuart and Claire set off on their adventure with a few friends to help them 'warm up' for their ride to China - they cycled over 500km through 4 countries in 4 days!

Day 1: London to Dover - a lot of hills, a total climb of 1350m that day
Day 2: Dunkirk to Ghent – flatter terrain, but a long day
Day 3: Ghent to Breda – mentally tough with tired bodies
Day 4: Breda to Amsterdam – they made it!

We had a lot of fun over the four days, and a lot of sore muscles too... Yet we all loved being a part of the beginning of this year’s Beyond the Bike adventure.

With London to Amsterdam under their belt (or should that be their lycra shorts?!) Stuart and Claire are now continuing on to Uganda and then to Zambia where I’ll meet up with them again.

Beyond the Bike isn’t just another sponsored cycled ride, it’s a tool for education too, connecting classrooms all over the world. However, every penny that is raised goes to Beyond Ourselves and United World Schools helping us to make a difference in the lives and communities of children in both Africa and Asia. In case you haven’t seen it yet, watch this short video about Beyond the Bike: The Next Revolution