School Priorities - SNV

Quality Education
are exploring instead of trying to absorb
lectures, they sometimes forget they are
learning.
But Fair Pen has also been successful at
endowing pupils with life skills as they
learn to organise themselves as leaders
and team members with their own roles,
responsibilities and deadlines. Throughout
the term the children work in teams to not
only identify problems to write about but
also to search out constructive solutions,
thereby building critical thinking skills.
They learn to separate facts from opinion,
while discovering a wide range of the
latter as they build consensus within their
teams. The project taps into their creativity,
channelling it into their writing so that they
can appeal to the wider reading audience.
While the pilot only started in September
2010, children have picked up the new
skills quickly and have been enthusiastic in
getting information from different sources,
including their neighbours, grandparents
and even district education officials. In
some schools, teachers read the newsletter
at assemblies or place it where more
people—including parents and community
members—can read the articles. Teachers
have even spontaneously developed their
own newsletters.
The district education office has shown
its appreciation for the project, with the
DEO stating, “I will make sure that the Fair
Pen teachers are not transferred for the
coming years, and I will advise headteachers
to allocate some of the UPE grants for
continuation of the Fair Pen project.”
Indeed, because SNV and Fair Pen worked
in close cooperation with the district
education office and PTC, both now feel
ownership of the project and are sharing the
concept with other schools and subcounties
in Kumi District. The Kumi District
Education Sector Working Group is creating
opportunities for it to be replicated in more
schools. The Centre Coordinating Tutor of
Mukongoro Subcounty stated, “The project
has made everyone enthusiastic about
alternative ways of teaching and learning,
while also creating improved relationships
with the community. The schools in Kumi
and elsewhere in Uganda are exchanging
their Fair Pen newspapers each term.”
Selected teachers are also trained as coaches
to enable the project to continue beyond
the Fair Pen-SNV involvement.
Developing a newsletter is a simple and lowcost
tool that is nevertheless highly effective
at strengthening teamwork, organisational
skills and critical thinking. With some luck,
it will create a reading culture that will
improve students’ literacy and keep them
interested in school.
For more information, contact
Ms. Nakabuya Josephine, Fair Pen Coordinator,
Tel. (+256) 0772 578 876, Email: nakjosephine@
yahoo.com
As part of Fair Pen, students
learned how to conduct
interviews, gather information,
attribute sources and write
creatively to produce their own
newsletter.
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