Students, teachers and the Cheleta Primary School community in Westlands Constituency have a reason to smile after securing a major funding from the World Bank.
The landmark deal was overseen by the World Bank Global Director of Education Jaime Saavedra Chanduvi, Westlands MP Tim Wanyonyi and the Cheleta Primary School administration on Friday, November 4.
The school has benefited from a Ksh500,000 funding from the Global Partnership Education (GPE) to boost performance of the learners through purchase of supplementary books for learning and revision under the Kenya Primary Education Development (PRIEDE) project.
Cheleta Primary School is one of the slum schools based in Githogoro informal settlement estate.
Over the years, the school, like many others in such estates, has experienced a myriad of challenges from infrastructure to teacher posting, learning materials to insecurity among others.
Consequently, it has lacked sufficient goodwill from the community as it is seen as a lowly school unable to offer quality education but this has been gradually addressed with Mr Wanyonyi explaining how a student from the school emerged top of the pack in previous exams.
“10 years ago, when I became MP, and when I came to this school, it was in a very pathetic situation and they had only about300 children. So, when we took over and rehabilitated it and improved the environment, the enrollment just shot up.
“…the performance was so bad that the then principle said that the children come from this informal settlement and from here, they just go back to the village. They had no hope, they had nothing to inspire them to do well in school,” he narrated.
Having come from a background where education was top priority, Mr Wanyonyi took it upon himself to encourage the pupils and according to his testimony, the school posted impressive results sending some candidates to top national schools like Alliance Boys High School.
Speaking at the same event, Mr Jaime Saavedra Chanduvi said he was impressed with the progress of the school and promised to offer his support for the slum children.
To the World Bank chief, education opens many hidden doors for many such children who in turn became source of hope to the world.
In addition, he said that the quality of education and what defines the quality of a country lies in the hands of teachers and not necessarily the infrastructure.
To him, the interaction between teachers and learners is very important as it is the key to quality education.
Being in school, he said, does not imply that children are learning stating that it is a global challenge that needs to be addressed.
“What makes the difference is teachers. Despite of all these investments by countries in technology…we see that what defines the quality of education of a country is the quality of the teachers,” he explained.
He added that what defines the quality of a country is the support that is given to the teachers.
He encouraged more interaction between teachers and learners as one way of improving the quality of education in the country.