The best laid plans

Some days out here are straightforward; others turn into something completely different from what was planned. Today has been one of the latter. Having made great progress on our training yesterday it almost seemed like today was determined to put a spanner in the works.

At about four o’clock yesterday afternoon I had a talk with one of the teachers about a concern that she had about her social security payments. It came as a surprise to me but I said I’d follow it up and made a few enquiries. It seemed that the problem was, in the end, a misunderstanding. Mostly a combination of poor communication and bad filing. This kind of thing pops up in most organisations at different times so I didn’t really think too much of it. I made a note to bring it up at the start of our training session today as an information item as much as anything and thought that there would be no further discussion

This turned out to be somewhat optimistic. The issue that we started with quickly led to a more general discussion about various issues that had cropped up since the last time I was in Kenya. This is a familiar pattern of events but it meant that the day’s agenda was hijacked. We talked a lot and, in the end, reached a good point where the various issues had been aired and settled. As the day unfolded we even got back on track with the training schedule. In a very short time we managed to pull the initial planning stage for a maths ‘boot camp’ together. I don’t know if the earlier discussion loosened up a creative vein in all of us but we very quickly arrived at a working outline for what will be a significant timetable change for us, starting as a pilot next week and continuing during March and early April. We will (assuming we have no further distractions) continue with our planning on Friday. 

Our ‘boot camp’ involves grouping the pupils in the lower and upper school by ability rather than age and working through a very intensive maths programme with them. We are aiming to make sure that all of our pupils master at least the basic maths skills needed for a solid foundation in the subject and that the most able mathematicians have a chance to make accelerated progress. It’s an ambitious plan that has the potential to really boost our maths performance over the year. It might not sound revolutionary but we are trying to address a problem that is common in countries all over the world. It would be marvelous to achieve a 'Made in Kenya' solution.