Wanyana wants parents to embrace homeschooling 

Teacher-centred curricula and learning patterns have for ages been the order of the day in Uganda. The whole idea is based on the teacher being the focal point, learners listen and focus on what the teacher has to pass on in class.

All the activity in the class is centred on teachers, who provide information. Examinations are set and marked by teachers to determine which learner is ready to transition to the next class. It is the traditional way of studying and commonly applied.

It is the same curriculum Racheal Wanyana, now proprietor of Kings Learning Christian Centre, in Kisaasi had enrolled her first three children at Lohana Academy, Kampala. The cycle of picking and dropping off children at school everyday can be frustrating as Wanyana’s family got to learn.

“My husband was not comfortable waking up at 5am, dropping children at school and then head to work. Pick them after work and get home at 8pm because of traffic,” says Wanyana. 

A candid conversation with the husband ended up in a compromise that home schooling was the next option. The children who were then aged five, seven and nine laid ground for Wanyana’s passion for education.

She is an Information Technology graduate, who was practicing programming. “I was doing programming. I am now an entrepreneur. I had to take a different path, although once in a while, I teach IT at the school,” she says.

Getting started

Wanyana attempted homeschooling her three children but it proved costly. “Using the local curriculum to homeschool them was then expensive because it required teachers of different subjects. So I started researching on other curricula I would use. I came across the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE),” recalls Wanyana.

ACE  is an education system that offers students the opportunity to learn at their own pace while being guided by biblically-based studying tools. She got conversant with the system and signed up for her children.

Her friends and neighbours started leaving their children at her home during working hours. The dividends of homeschooling were manifesting through her children.

“As my children grew older, other people kept admiring what I was doing with them, so they proposed that I take on their children,” she says. The growth led her into going through all the required processes for registration and that is how Kings Learning Christian Centre was born.

 “At that time, there were few users of that curriculum and they wanted it to grow. The community was small and they gave us all the attention,” she recollects.

Wanyana had to travel to South Africa for training before rolling out this mode of learning to other learners. The fact that it did not initially need any facility but a space to act as a learning centre was a win.

For the last nine years, Wanyana has since brought on board about 200 learners, with a learner centred curriculum. “It is a home schooling original curriculum which a parent that opted to have their children learn from home would go for. Children teach themselves and are supervised by someone who has a level of intellectual capacity,” Wanyama breaks it down. 

The feedback from parents trusting their children with Wanyana’s school and style of teaching is encouraging. Self-dependence is visible early on in a child’s development.

“Parents realise that children become independent at an early age because they are teaching themselves and not very dependent on whoever is supervising them. They learn how to research and learn to do things on their own,” she adds.

According to Wanyana, it all starts with teachers including students in decision making processes and trusting in their ability to lead. In this learning setting, the learner has no option but to grasp everything taught.

How it works

It is impossible for one to move to the next concept before mastering the previous one, which teaches a learner to get the job done. Learners are also examined when they feel ready after going through a concept, unlike the teacher centred setting where examinations have mandatory timetables. This gets some pressure off them and saves them the burden of unhealthy competition among learners.

“You get to study at your own pace, you do not have to worry about being left behind by your classmates because everyone can be covering different concepts in the same learning space,” says Wanyana, who is convinced that the Christian learning curriculum can also help naughty students reform.

Character-based teaching

The style of teaching is also character-based; building on characters Jesus Christ stipulated out there. On each day of school, children are taken through the importance of different character traits with animated illustrations, stories or cartoons.

 These include kindness, honesty, equity, courage, humility, obedience, respect and hard work among others. “Building a child’s character is a key priority,” It is why children older than 12 years are never admitted because one’s character is already built, according to Wanyana. The curriculum recommends you start dealing with children way early on. Wanyama also advises that this setup supports parents get more involved in their children’s education and not leave it for the school or teacher.

She says it is every parent’s responsibility to monitor their child’s education. In the past, proposals have been tabled to reform the education structure. Observers think it is time a more practical system was put in place to create balance. It is the direction Wanyana is already looking at.

 “We have come to terms with the fact that not everyone will be an academician or good at academics. Very many students are hands-on. We are already setting up a vocational school in Kayunga to teach life skills” she confirms.

Wanyana adds that carpentry, mechanical engineering, home economics, farming, knitting, bakery, art and craft, among others will be instilled into learners from an early age for a solid foundation.

There is a need to appreciate hands-on learners who struggle academically. As a mother and educationist, Wanyana prides herself in making a difference in a child’s life every day she wakes up. “Some of them just need love or care. It is not about only academics but the wellbeing of learners,” she adds.

Challenges

A section of the public has reservations when it comes to child-centred learning because they lack enough knowledge on it. Some fear it is expensive yet the rates are similar to those charged in teacher- centred learning.

There is also a flawed mindset that a good school and education is about buildings. “Running a school that does not have extensive physical structures is hard for many people or parents to digest. When they come here and do not see big buildings, we have to deal with many questions. People expect to see many classrooms, forgetting that learning can happen anywhere as long as the environment is conducive,” she explains.

Positive mindset

 All one needs is their work books, concentration and a positive mindset. The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic forced learners to adapt to new ways of studying from different places away from school facilities.

Radios, television and different internet applications have all been means of education until school officially opened this week. Those who had been running child-centred learning did not feel the pinch while the other learners had to adjust.

Co-curricular activities

 “Schools have been closed for two years but never did learning here stop at any one time,” she proudly enlightens. The pandemic to some extent held back Kings Christian Learning Centre. Some parents and guardians lost jobs thus failing to clear school fees. For a school that  fully depends on tuition, financial hiccups surfaced and at the end of the day, staff had to take huge pay cuts or move on.

Child-centred learning also caters for co-curricular activities, where Accelerated Christian Education students go for conventions to exhibit their talents in science projects, sports, photography, music, playing instruments and etiquette.

Power to the learners

Societal demands dictate power shifts to the hands of the learners, it is also evident at university level where focus has turned to research as the main pillar of the higher institutions of learning.

“Even universities are being affected as the old teacher-centred curriculum is being binned,” she notes. The traditional model is by the day being replaced with a learner-centred model, which focuses on outputs, what knowledge and abilities students have learnt, what they actually know and what they are good at.

The notion is that teachers and lecturers should not come off as the only knowledge givers but facilitate learning. When a classroom runs in a student-centred setting, it allows students to create and imagine thus sharing the focus with teachers.

Instead of listening to the teacher entirely, students and teachers interact and arrive at a solution together, hence developing critical thinking skills that strengthen memory. Group work is encouraged and students learn to collaborate and communicate with one another. Uganda can massively benefit from implementing child-centred learning because it produces independent thinkers with significant abilities for lifelong learning.

The mode of learning gets more followers everyday, as the education sector embraces and ushers it in at different levels.

Those in Wanyana’s corner hope to take over one day with the belief learner-centred education is the way to go. It is a more inclusive brand of education that comes with a lot of advantages and Wanyana is not about to stop advocating for it.

Reaping big

Wanyana travelled to South Africa for training before rolling out this mode of learning to other learners. The fact that it did not initially need any facility but a space to act as a learning centre was a win.

For the last nine years, Wanyana has since brought on board about 200 learners, with a learner-centred curriculum. It is a home schooling curriculum in which children teach themselves and are supervised by someone who has undergone training and demonstrates a level of intellectual capacity.