Enelerai High School

It has been sooo long since my last post... I know... We have had a great month of building and practice teaching for a group of teacher candidates from Nipissing University. Sadly, they left this morning for Canada...

They were doing their teaching at Enelerai Primary, and the last day I was there with them I had a chance to visit Enelerai High School. Although Primary education became free and compulsory in 2004, students still need to pay to attend high school. In this particular school, which is government run, there was a full classroom of form 1 students (grade 9 equivalent)... with over half that were GIRLS (10 years ago, there were barely any girls in the education system at all). Form 2 was about half the size, with fewer girls... form 3 the same... form 4 was a tiny class of about 20... with only 3 girls.

This is a bit alarming to me. With the amount of girls decreasing soo much from form 1 to form 2... it could mean a variety of different things. Maybe it has just taken a while for the girls that started compulsory and free primary education to filter up into the secondary schools... maybe as time goes on the girls, and boys, are forced to leave their education to pursue income generating activities to support their families?... I don't know the answers for sure... but I do know that the need for universal/free high school is very real.

I was touched greatly by the students of Enelerai high school... each one with high hopes of becoming professionals, and desperately wanting to attend university.... but looking at the form 4 class was a bit of a wakeup call. How many of them will even be able to afford to finish high school, let alone attend university?


I am off to the Mara again tomorrow. I will be building with a group from Peterborough, Ontario at a Maasai community called Oloosiyoi. I will be posting upon my return.

In the meantime, please visit www.freethechildren.com and see ways that you can raise your own awareness of education in developing countries. :)