Why the long silence?..... Well, it's been pretty busy over the last few weeks, I guess. No sooner do we finish one set of exams, then another exam week rears its ugly head. But that is the Ugandan way - endless testing, marking and assessing, at least two or three times a term. The last 7 - 10 days are completely lost from a teaching point of view, as each teacher must mark literally hundreds of papers and then write hundreds of reports before the end of term. We have learnt that this last week is known in Uganda as the 'redundant' or 'lousy' week - boarding students must stay in school with neither lessons nor anything to do, apart from packing up and sweeping the compound.
Umm... if you just received notification of this - but with no text and no photo, you would be forgiven for thinking it was a very cryptic title. Actually it is a technical, blog-loading prob from the Kampala side and yes, we are blaming the equipment of course....... now we have text... and the photo will arrive soon... (thanks, Simon 'Fixer' Bramwell in Romsey).
Previous teams to WTA will remember Christine who left WTA after she finished S4 in November 2010, at the point when the school moved. She had previously been at WTA since S1 and We hadn't heard from her, but knew that she was continuing A' levels at another school. Yesterday she turned up for a surprise visit and it was lovely to see her. There are several staff and many pupils who remember her well (who could forget her?!), so it was fun to catch up. She is taking HED-Art as her 'combination', which translates as History, Economics and Divinity (R.E.) with Art as a subsidiary. Also as Head Girl, (at a secondary school in Bombo), she is allowed to wear a suit, so looked very smart. Other pupils showed her round the WTA site during the lunch hour - she is as chatty and sparky as ever.
One of the biggest frustrations of working in the school system here is that there is rarely any follow up or mechanism for finding out what happens to pupils who move on. And we often wonder how they are, whether they have continued to study or dropped out of the system completely. So it was really good to see Christine and hear how she is progressing.
We are further improving Wobulenzi Town Academy by completing some smaller projects to firmly establish the school’s position within the community for the long term.
Can YOU HELP US to get all this done? We are here on the ground in Uganda to make it happen, but we are asking you to join us by helping to provide the finance. 100% of all donations will get used - no deductions.
UP to NOW…..The new school site opened in 2011. We need to complete these projects to ensure that the school keeps moving forwards. The new academic year started on 30th January, but all students should return by the end of February. This past year was a huge success; we anticipate that over 500 will benefit this year.
WTA provides excellent-value, affordable secondary education to most students, as well as subsidised or free places to the most disadvantaged children. Its reputation has rapidly improved since partnership with ServeDirect and this was confirmed recently with much improved ‘O’ level results.
The fundraising target on this page matches the combined total for the improvements of WTA, detailed below.
RESULT !
In the words of Charles' text: " We have just collected the results of our candidates. Thank GOD everybody passed, although we missed a lot of good grades due to determinant [Maths+some English] subjects"
It seems an age since S4 took their O' level exams last October... but finally the results were released this week. In short - the results are much better than last year, so big smiles all round! It is a very complicated and confusing mark system, to the uninitiated, - the 8 best subject marks create an aggregate grade -with Division 1 being the best and Division 9 a total fail. This is the first year that WTA has had its own official exam centre - we were all anxious to know what difference this would make, as well the effect of new teachers.
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Here is a quick pic update showing the progress with our 'adding a splash of colour' project. Basically the dormitories are now half done and look great. This picture was taken on Saturday. Everyone who has come to site during these past few days have commented on how good it is looking. Many thanks to all of you who have added some money to the website and to those who have said that they will be doing so......Please take this as a gentle reminder as we really need to finish off the rest of the painting this week - so if you are going to put on some money, please do it asap.
The New Year has started at a rush over here as it was straight back into building and maintenance at the school - trying to get ready for the new academic year which starts on 30th January. And it is seriously hot, especially after England at this time of year.
So, here's the thing. Up to now we have left the outside of the 6 dormitories unpainted for two reasons. Firstly to see how they would fair (as no paint means less future maintenance) and secondly we had no money! Well, suffice to say they need painting as without paint the render has a tendency to become a bit crumbly in the sun.
Previous teams to WTA will remember Christine who left WTA after she finished S4 in November 2010, at the point when the school moved. She had previously been at WTA since S1 and We hadn't heard from her, but knew that she was continuing A' levels at another school. Yesterday she turned up for a surprise visit and it was lovely to see her. There are several staff and many pupils who remember her well (who could forget her?!), so it was fun to catch up. She is taking HED-Art as her 'combination', which translates as History, Economics and Divinity (R.E.) with Art as a subsidiary. Also as Head Girl, (at a secondary school in Bombo), she is allowed to wear a suit, so looked very smart. Other pupils showed her round the WTA site during the lunch hour - she is as chatty and sparky as ever.
So, here's the thing. Up to now we have left the outside of the 6 dormitories unpainted for two reasons. Firstly to see how they would fair (as no paint means less future maintenance) and secondly we had no money! Well, suffice to say they need painting as without paint the render has a tendency to become a bit crumbly in the sun. 
