Graduation Day at Kazembe Primary School

July 18th, 2013

On Friday, July 12th, Kazembe Primary School had its graduation ceremony.  It was quite an affair.  They pulled a bunch of desks out of the classrooms in a semi-circle under a big tree.  All of the teachers, volunteers, and important people from the village were sitting in the desks facing the entire student body.  For each standard (grade), they read off the names and point totals of the students who passed their examinations.  This was quite a time-consuming affair, but what I couldn’t get over was how public the event was.  Even those students who scored poorly had their grades advertised to the entire village.  Those who did not pass had to sit patiently and hope that their name would be called.  Roughly 50% of the students in a given standard will pass, which seems quite low.  Sometimes I wish we could do the same thing in the United States!  At least here students earn the outcomes that they get, rather than slacking off all year and scraping by with minimal effort.

 

The graduation ceremony was truly a community event, and parents would frequently hand out money to their children if their name were called.  There was a lot of jubilant howling, singing, and dancing.  Here’s a picture of Standard 7 receiving their scores.  Keenean, Zohair and I are lifting the school valedictorian, Jonathan.

Many of the students who have been coming to Kids Corner and English Corner were the high scorers on their exams, which was very encouraging to see.  Our coordinator, Francesca, told us that when she arrived the students had little or no English—when asked: “what is your name?” they would respond with: “yes.”  Now they can hold fairly good English conversation, and some students scored quite high on their English test.  At least Help2Kids has demonstrated a marked positive influence in these kids’ education.  This is extremely important not only because English is the international language and the language of opportunity, but because from Standard 5 through Standard 8, all examinations are in English, not Chichewa.  If students cannot read and understand English, in all likelihood they will not pass Math, Agriculture, or any of their other classes.
 

Here is a picture of the progress that we have made on the construction of the new school block.  It is pretty impressive how fast this building is getting built.