Dreamland Education Centre

The scope of the IcFEM is huge. One of the many projects undertaken, and perhaps one of the most successful as well, is the Dreamland Education Centre. Having been to see the location and dropped into each class with a slightly awkward "Hi I'm John...and I'm Emily...We're from England...do you know where that is?...[silence]" on the day here, I spent the whole day there last Tuesday. DEC is private primary school with classes all the way up to standard 8, which means that, since educational progression is determined only by merit, means that the age range of students spans a good 20 years. The building is impressive by Kenyan standards: on two floors, built using high-quality stone and a green painted corrugated iron roof. Admittedly, there is still no electricity - the digital age is prevented from arriving here - but then again this is true of almost all the primary schools we have seen.
However, far more significant than its outward appearance is what is going on inside, both inside the buildings and inside the pupils hearts and minds. It almost school closing time when I was there, and so in wonderfully African way, all the children were simply sent into the playground all day while the teachers did marking and wrote their reports. I was to keep them entertained/occupied. I was briefed by the Chaplain, Pamela and she accompanied me with each class that I taught. The appointment of a Chaplain is unusual in a primary school, although the at least 95% of teachers confidently taught their students the Christian faith, and it clearly affected all parts of the teaching practice. DEC has only Christian staff, but has also decided to employ a Chaplain with overall responsibility for the spiritual development of the children. She does a quite remarkable job, and is clearly the main mover and shaker in the institution after the Headmaster, Cornelius. Each form has in it a few appointed 'pastors' who have 'spiritual responsibility' for the form. They are not appointed, rather each one volunteers. The are taught to look after their contemporaries and help them with any difficulties they may experience. When I first heard of this, bearing in mind that we are talking of Primary school children, I thought this sounded like a recipe for disaster: pride in those who had the special status, resentment and accusations of being 'teacher's pet' from the rest, malicious reporting by the 'pastors' trying to exploit their position of responsibility etc. But it seems quite the opposite happens. The pupils do not take the responsibility lightly. They are taught not to confront any issues, nor to report them, only to pray, and especially to pray for any who are absent, sick or unhappy. Each week they meet together with the Chaplain to pray for an hour for their respective classes. In a sense that I have never seen before, except possibly in the Mission school in Quito, this is a school truly built on the rock of the word of God. The vast majority of the children have made a public, personal commitment to following Jesus, and from the little I saw of them, they, like many of their contemporaries across the schools here demonstrate a maturity far beyond their years. Take little Billy Wafula for example. Knee-high to a grass hopper at the age of about 8 he goes home every evening and insists that he pray for his family before going to sleep. His mother contacted the school not quite knowing what to do about this, and the Chaplain reassured her that she could just listen. So every evening tiny little Billy insists that everyone listen while he prays for his mother, his father and his sister.

What is more, the childrens' behaviour in class is impeccable: they are always polite, work hard and have a capacity for concentration 3 times that of their British peers. I sang some songs and taught the bible to a group of 100 or so 4-7 year-olds for about an hour and all heads were up and concentrating throughout. What is more, in all the time I have spent here I have not heard a little child cry, and I have seen over 4000 of them. No fighting with their neighbours, no obvious shaming of other pupils, no great complications as to who sits with who. If only the average radleian could assimilate some of this behaviour.
I cannot see how this country can fail to change and progress in the hands of this new generation of God-fearing, hard-working children. The obstacle to development at the moment come at the other end of their education. It seems their are very few polytechnics and the process of converting academic ability into application in the work place lacks effectiveness. But it is only recently that the government introduced free primary education, and even more recently that Secondary education was subsidised, so progress is being made.

In fact, having learnt that Primary education is now free, we questioned the value of DEC. It is a school founded on great Christian principles but inevitably must charge its students, thereby excluding those who are most in need of its help, and indeed those who most fit the categories that the mission is targeting. Is this really in keeping with the mission's aims?

After even a short time in the public schools we had an answer to our question. The first point to note is that IcFEM runs a student sponsorship program which allows those who cannot afford education the chance to have it. A number of those students sponsored, who often come from far away out in the rural communities are taught at Dreamland, and are thereby offered a wonderful learning environment as well as the stability of a loving Christian community within which to grow up. Secondly as further school visits testified, the government's commitment to free primary school education is a nice idea but has not been followed up by anything like the amount of funding required. Indeed it had always been the case that the government paid the teachers in the schools, and so it's commitment to make education free was only a promise to cover the maintenance, teaching materials and consumables (exercise books, pencils etc). Uniforms are still the responsibility of the families, as is witnessed by the quite terrible state of some of them - some children have only one set which they must wear even at the weekends. What is more, this funding is insufficient, irregular and fantastically poorly administrated. We spent an afternoon in Letonye primary school where we were welcomed into the Head's office by the deputy a wonderful larger than life African mother who was full of insights into the situation. As our conversation about the school continued, I noticed a chart on the wall that looked to be indicating the funds given to the school as well as noting the number of pupils registered. It charted the history of government funding since the initiative began. In some years the government gave three lump sums, in some years two. The totals for each year varied drastically and were in no way related to the number of students. They were also quite unpredictable, sometimes two months apart, sometimes nine. In addition the deputy told us that the government specified the exact amount that should be spent on all the components covered - text books, maintenance, etc. Indeed the school would be audited each year and needed to demonstrate that all the money had been spent for the purpose intended, presumably as a defense against corruption. Should the school be found to have spent the money in different proportion the head would lose their job and be disciplined. She then pointed behind our heads. There in the corner of the office was an enormous stack of unused text books which the schools was obliged to buy as proscribed. The pupils had quite sufficient learning materials anyway, so these books would just remain where they were, still in the boxes in which they came. "The good thing" said the deputy, " is that you never know what the next administration will decide" so at least they won't run out of text books whatever happens.
Whilst the goal of reducing corruption is laudable, the conversation of the next five minutes highlighted the complete absurdity of the situation. Whilst these brand new text books gathered dust in the corner, not three metres from where we were sitting, a teacher was standing in front of 135 pupils with barely sufficent room to stand up next to the blackboard, despite the painstaking arrangement of the desks to maximise capacity.
Families in Kenya tend to have between 4 and 12 children, which naturally causes astronomic population growth. In addition hundreds of thousands of children who were previously unable to afford their education are now on the schools market. To make matters worse, Letonye primary has faired particularly well in recent years and therefore attracted many new pupils. The government has decreed that each parent has the right to choose which school their children are to attend, and therefore that the clause 'no room' does not exist as a reason for a turning away a child. Letonye is growing by one 45-child classroom every year, and yet the government has given no funding for the construction of new buildings at all. Should the school employ a new teacher, that teacher will have nowhere to practice their trade, unless it is pressed against one
of their colleagues standing on the tiny area of free floor space in front of 135 children. Meanwhile the textbook pile increases...

This is where the Harambe foundation from Holland, whose funds are administered by IcFEM has helped enormously. In Letonye they have gone 40-60 with the parents of the (public!?) school to fund the building of 4 new classrooms. That means a mere 55 pupils or so per room!

There is another way, however. At the beginning of this week I spent the morning in Lugulu boarding primary school (also public). This place looks truly impressive: directly after the rather grand and well painted gates on the right is what looks like a small tree nursery, used to the supply the numerous patches of vegetation, plants, bushes and landscaping around the site. They also have electricity and a series of very reasonable buildings. The management here has gone for a different approach. They are a public school, but have simply decided to charge their students. They say they have insufficient funds from the government to pay their gardeners and their electricity bills and so they simply impose.