Transitions

It's that weekend when Mum, Dad, Granny, a beanbag, three new frying pans and a fresh-faced queezy feeling fresh-hatched student all squeeze into a car en route to university. A mate of mine here has just returned to UK to help purchase the potplants and shift the suitcases with their son en route for college. For us it marks three weeks since FirstBorn started boarding school in UK.  I'm back in Kenya, back Home, but home feels different. Something is missing. Someone. So I've been thinking on transitions, on tales from friends in the same space and of our experiences in the last few weeks.

As FirstBorn and I sat perched on the edge of our chairs at the lunch for new international students and their families on D-Day, H-Hour at the new school, a kindly soul told us of her grandfather, who had spent his early childhood in Eldoret, Kenya.
'And then, when he was seven, he was sent off to school, on his own, on a steamer to UK.  He didn't see his parents again for a year and a half.'  Poor mite. But it puts our anguishing into some perspective.

Several of our friends who grew up in Kenya a generation ago describe memories of traumatic arrivals at UK schools, of immersion into a very different reality. One described being given a five pound note in case of emergencies before being left. Described considering what to do with it, and doing what you do in Kenya. He found a handy tree, buried the fiver under the tree, left his marker stone so he could find it again.  Post office accounts or handy envelopes left with the housemaster an alien universe away.

A mate who was housemistress at an international boarding school in Kenya 15 years ago described their then reality.
'There was only one phone on the whole compound, for staff and pupils alike. You'd all queue up, - and the guard in charge of the phone would stay in the room with you while you made the call - even when you were a staff member! If you wanted to say something private you'd have to clear the queue from the room.' Aargh.

So yes, things are far easier now. There is email, skype, mobiles, texting. I do feel that she really is in good hands. But she's still a very long way away, and we miss her desperately.  But it helps to hear the experience of others. A mate last year described tapping on her son's bedroom door to wake him of a school morning, tapping as she'd done every other day for the last x years. But of course, he wasn't there. Another, in this her son's second year away, described counting suitcases at Heathrow as she returned. Recounting them. Something's not quite right. No, the problem isn't the suitcases, it's that its not quite right without him here with us.  For me its the empty space at mealtimes that sets me off. We've had to shift round the table, so everything is off centre, so none of us are where we were before. As we aren't.

FirstBorn seems to be settling. She's found friends and fun things to do.  She's sent enthusiastic texts and emails, - and now they are coming far less frequently, a good sign I feel. She claims to have practised her flute at least once. And, out of character, even to have gone on a voluntary run.
'Once. But not again. I haven't changed that much!'
But this isn't an experience for the faint hearted, child nor adult. Not as dire as for that tiny seven year old, but heart-wrenching nonetheless. Hearing of problems that you can't solve for them, of issues that you attempt to coach through in your laborious enigmatic text speak.  A mate here whose adult children are students in UK:
'Her boyfriend split up with her over the summer. Seeing her little face and downturned smile on skype and not being able to do anything much to help, being stuck here when she needed me, oh it was awful.' 
I heard at third hand of a Kenyan student studying abroad whose passport got put through the washing cycle once too many times.
'He couldn't get it sorted in time, couldn't get back, had to spend his first Christmas away from home.'

Others, outside the experience, say sweepingly
'Oh it makes them very resilient. You don't need to worry. They adapt.'
Yes they do, and so do we. But that is the armslength cliche, and this is the soft underbelly of the reality for now. Tables laid with one place too many. Favourite foods placed into supermarket trolleys and set aside at the checkout. Mums with bleary mascara hugging each other on the playground, 5000 miles away.

Preparing for Boarding School

I know its one of those contentious topics. My working life has been working in state sector education, its where I choose to put my efforts, I know how much the input of one family can make a difference to a school, and yet here we are, Firstborn off to boarding school 5000 miles from the family home. I think, if we're honest, we each have areas where we fall short of our best lights. If you're tempted to write to me today about our decision, don't, today, D-Day minus Two, ain't the day, take the time instead to muse on your own less consistent areas.  But I thought, nonetheless I'd write on preparing for boarding school from the expat perspective.

Visiting the final choice school in rural England last year the head told us with relish about their first boarder from Afghanistan, who had just joined the school.
'A week in when I asked her what she'd found different, she grinned, and told me she'd just seen a woman on a bike, cycling!  You don't see that in Afghanistan, she said.'
Firstborn and I have now been back in UK for a week, engaged in the frenzied expat shopping scavanger hunt of items for a new school, a new season. :
'Yes you will need a jumper or two. I know they aren't that stylish, but warmth matters too. Yes and some gloves. And you want your goretex raincoat to be longer than that. Yes even longer than that.'
Standing back and recognising that items that were acceptable in not-very-judgmental-Nairobi, now look shabby even in not-very-swish-South-Wales. As we've scratched our heads in despair, comparing the list of essentials with the paltry pickings we find, that Afghan girl - and her bemused mother facing the same shopping list - have been vivid before me. Because difficult as it is to find astro boots in Swansea, I'd guess its far more difficult in Kabul, or on first arrival in a new country.

So what advice would I give to others from my experience?
Plan ahead. 
I thought visiting our dentist in March for an August departure would be ample time to get a brace diagnosed and fitted. But no. For while Nairobi has orthodentists, first they take a cast and x-rays, which are sent to a sporadically held Dental Panel in another country, to assess whether this brace is really needed and therefore might be part-reimbursed, or is just cosmetic.  We got an email from the Dental Panel two days before FirstBorn left Kenya, - but we now need to wait for the cast and the x-rays to wing their way back to Nairobi, for the brace to be made. Halfterm maybe?

Confer with experts.
Life in UK has moved on in our three years abroad. I am a timetravel waif from the 1970s dumped into 2012 without any of the necessary skills.  Thank you my UK mum mates who advised on clothes shops for 13 year old girls (New Look, H&M, River Island; Jack Wills & Hollister if you've come into the money).  And facebook friends and the managers of several phone shops who patiently explained the pros and cons of different mobile phone payment options, several times by the end.  Thank you expat mums who recommended tracing round the feet of SecondBorn so I could still get Clarks school shoes for him, while he stays in Nairobi. Snarls to those Swansea Shoppers in stitches, listening to the mother daughter changing room dynamic 'You can't wear that out', squared, cubed and fastforwarded when you're buying clothes for a new culture, where the vagaries and negotiated boundaries of Nairobi dress codes are irrelevant.

Manage your emotions
FirstBorn is flying the nest. I can't protect her from what is coming next, she'll be independent, without me - so my residual role as Mum for this stage is to ensure there is a nametaped mattress waiting beneath the clifftop, and that she has appropriately sized, sourced, regulation coloured wings to wear as she flaps away. Or so it feels in my surge of panic. 

I know this feeling of old. As she rushed off to pre-school, could she reliably wipe her bottom independently?  As SecondBorn started school, could he find his gloves, scarf and coat from the pile of others on the floor of the classroom?  And now, aged 13, can she do enough of the other things needed for independent twenty first century living?

As we scurried around South Wales's shops under a teetering pile of five towels and a skype headset we have discovered our own rhythm. Reduced to tears by the man in the small independent sports shop we stopped for our first reviving coffee at 9.05 am.  When confused, when stressed, when anxious, when faced with a long list of clothes for a season you haven't encountered for the last three years, a cup of tea every 90 minutes is primary health care.

Make sure you have a postal address
This is not a trip to do exclusively from cutprice travellodges. This is a trip where you need a kindly friend or relative to receive the parcels of ebay purchases, and a flourishing local market to supplement the shortfalls. Alarm clocks, skype headset, laptop bag and hockey stick. Welly boots and school shoes, trainers and padlocks. You need access to someone's internet, to rejoin Tesco Clubcard (now only online), to arrange insurance for the flute, excess insurance for the hirecar, to liaise with the soulmates who will jolly you along as you howl into your pint.  You'll be doing those Mum things, - shaping gumguards - which you just can't do from a travellodge room. Today's instructions required a saucepan, boiling water, a slotted spoon & a mirror - possible from someone's house, just impossible when all you have is a Corby trouser press and a dinky kettle (fused).  And anyway an extra set of hands will come in handy for the marathon nametaping extravaganza that lies ahead.

Bring multiple proof of address and identity.
You'd think money launderers might be dealing in bigger figures than a debit account for an under-16 year old with an ATM card only and no overdraft. But we have to comply with the same legislation. As I brought out the piles of correspondence which proved only our complicated situation but not the address in which I was trying to open her account - how many 13 year olds have utility bills in their name anyway? - the kindly manager heaved a sigh. And thought, I think, if I were a money launderer, I might have prepared a better story. It's the kindly logic I love in UK.

For me this is a time of huddling close. Huddling close to our Firstborn while she's in my grasp, and to our denuded family on the sofa once I'm back. But huddling close too to my mates, the other parents going through this in Kenya. This stage (13+) is a time of boarding school for all but a handful who continue school in Kenya, whether its boarding in Kenya for the majority, or abroad, for a few. So all her peers are away too, though closer to hand than her.  As I loiter in Britain waiting for the first weekend when I can spring her from school, I'd been wondering what I could do that would meet my needs to be stimulated, amongst people, but allow me space to be probably actively miserable too.  I'll be going on a walking holiday, alone, in Cumbria, where I spent so many happy childhood and teen holidays, and to a writing conference. Distraction therapy I hope, while our love makes her way, with us at one remove.

To the Victor the Spoils? Just not Cricket.

When planning a family move to another country yes you look at the schools. But maybe, despite our most rigorous investigations, via website, via Good School Guide and personal visits, checking school libraries and art facilities and probing willingness of staff to say what they were good and less good at, maybe we were looking at the wrong things.

I'm not so very picky. I get that its hard being a teacher. But in my opinion all of Nairobi's schools have strengths and significant flaws. The kind of flaws which in UK would have us moving our state-educated kids, rapidly.  But look before you leap. Are the alternatives any better in the things which matter to us?

One of the things we looked at carefully was the racial mix of the schools.  One of Nairobi's schools is still 95% white. Our kids are at a school where a third of the kids are Kenyan African, a third Kenyan Asian, and a third expat or White Kenyan.  And the groups mix, which also isn't the case everywhere else.  Our kids have friends from a whole range of backgrounds, and that's what we'd wished for, and prize.

But the problem is, I come to realise, that despite their best pitch, most schools are run according to the values prevalent in the society you're in.  Friends of ours have recently moved to Kenya from another African country. 
'But why were your kids in the French system there, even thought that wasn't your language or the language of the country?'
'Well it was about discipline. In the other schools, if a child did something wrong, they were made to stand, holding a chair above their head in full tropical sun, often for hours.  We wanted a school which paid lip service to some more civilised ways of disciplining.'
Well yes. With you all the way there. 'Bien choisi.'

We came to Kenya from a tiny UK village school, with 100 kids, 4 teachers including the head and massive support and input from the local community. Yes it had been selective, it wasn't an open house for all, and that was its flaw. To get in, appreciated as it was, you had to be an active, engaged member in your local church. Once your kids were in you had to do your bit, giving your time by helping out in the library, running the walking bus, listening to kids read or as a governor - or giving your money.  It wasn't an academic power house. But it built community. We came to know each other in the things which matter. Our kids played in the same playgrounds, the parents drank wine at each others houses, did their bits on lift rotas to Brownies and covered for parents with scheduling difficulties. We got involved on the difficult bits too.  Weighed in on the playground to tell off someone else's child if need be. Organised rotas to spend time with a Mum with terminal cancer, to drop off meals to help feed the family. I can't say how I miss it.

When FirstBorn went for her SettlingInDay there, older children, aged all of ten, whisked her and her peers off at breaktime to initiate piggy in the middle for the anxious five year olds.  There was a Friendship Bench on which any child feeling a tad lonesome could sit, for the Playground Buddies, nine year olds, to scoop up in an inclusive game of tag.  Teachers lived up to their wider responsibilities. When SecondBorn's mate, enthralled by Alan Sugar's behaviour on The Apprentice, excluded SecondBorn from the playground game of football two days running:
'You're fired!'
his teacher told the other set of parents - also our mates - and explained to the child why, despite this happening in the outside world, this had been hurtful. SecondBorn's mate wrote him an apology on his own initiative. Friendship restored, life lessons learned, the weaker or more sensitive or Today's Underdog protected.

Underpinning it all were two things. A belief, put into practice, that each child matters. A recognition that beliefs are empty if they aren't acted upon, lived out.  And secondly, a commitment to recognising and celebrating the gifts of each.  In the weekly Sharing Assembly, each class teacher awarded an oversized rosette that week to a child in their class. Read a citation on why it had been given. And the rosettes, denoting a Beacon Pupil, were awarded for kindness, inclusion, leadership, exemplary tidying up, negotiation between friends on the playground and so on. Maybe for hard work. But not for academic success, for which there were a whole other set of prizes, shiny stickers which got stuck on work, after a trip to the headteacher's office to be congratulated.  The Beacon Pupil rosette had scarcity value. It might only be worn in the week in which it was issued.  When FirstBorn first received it she insisted we went, three evenings running, to the Tescos hypermarket near our home, where  a wider range of kindly elderly ladies could be counted on to notice it, comment, and to chuck her under the chin.  And the school realised too that if a child for some reason had not been caught by authority Being Good in a major way, then they would be encouraged for a lesser act.  I remember a child's look of startled delight and utter beaming pride when his citation was read out: 'For being kind to the classroom land snails, and reminding us daily to feed them their lettuce.'  Each plant needs watering. Children need praise to motivate them.

By comparison, in our Kenyan school, there is a focus on showcasing a minority of children who already excel in things. Frequently with the support of an additional coach - elocution for the poetry competition, five nights of swimming training for the swimmers. Yes, it's nice to show the pretty ways of the Best of the Bunch. But why are the same children given attention and the majority of the races as the Best of the Bunch across each of the six sports played?  Of course, in external competitions it's right it is the best who compete and perform. But internally? In compulsory events in the curriculum? To my mind then each child should have the chance to compete, at least in the heats.  But I have the vision of the other school before me. Of the anarchic, chaotic, highspirited Whole School Relay, in which overexcited five year olds might run three times, and it never mattered.  There were races for excellence, and children who competed at county and regional level and beyond. And there was inclusion too, about demonstrating that it mattered that each child had a chance to perform, to try their hardest, to develop their skills, to be part of the event. Being good at something, being recognised, was its own reward. But taking part, striving hard, matters for the education of all.  But we're in Kenya. There are massive payoffs here to being The Best in something, witness the lists of names in the newpapers of the top 100 candidates in national exams.  And this is a culture without formal safety nets.

I accept that our children won't star in all the races they might in a more inclusive culture. What I object to is how they are belittled during the selection process.  How, in the selection for the upcoming swimming gala, instead of conducting heats, the process was for children in their houses to put up their hands for each race in which they thought they could compete. And then they had to negotiate between peers
'Well I'm better at breast stroke than you',
with the other children shouting out who they thought was best.  SecondBorn is a reasonable swimmer - he came second in two races last year - but not a confident advocate for his abilities. And the experience of volunteering for ten races, and being selected by his peers for the float race (aimed at non-swimmers) won't have helped with that.  And in this culture, the supervising teacher didn't see her role as promoting inclusion, rather more, supervising the audience at the Roman gladiator bloodbath.  It wouldn't happen in the Olympics, that the competitor with the greatest confidence, not the one with the fastest time got to compete.

The difficulty too, what the school doesn't want to acknowledge, is that in Kenya its far from a level playing field.  Several parents have explained to me:
'If you want your child to be selected for something, because they arrived a year late, after teams had been selected, its best to get private coaching with the person who selects for the team.  That way they see what they can do, they get to feel a link with them, they feel identified with their progress.'
Just teaching them in the school sports lessons seemingly isn't enough for this.
More political parents have explained:
'Look, to move a child into the team they have to bump another child. Lots of parents get angry at this. Cause difficulties for the coaches. They can fear for their jobs with some parents. You need to make it in their interests to look out for your child.'
I'm not saying I agree with this. But it has chimed with our experience.  SecondBorn wasn't selected for the B team in cricket last year. He cried, and I explained that he'd probably get switched in, later in the term, so everyone could get a chance.  Joy unbounded, in the second week, he was selected, another child deselected.  Whose mother then loudly harranged the coach. SecondBorn played one game, and was then swapped out in favour of the other child, for the whole of the term.  It could have been on good cricketing grounds. But I have my doubts.

First and SecondBorn are learning different things about the world than I learnt at their age. SecondBorn sat in the car on the way back from taekwondo yesterday and explained to me in considerable detail which of his teachers would lie to get out of trouble with parents or authorities, and which wouldn't.  He's not a boy of great emotional intelligence, he's nine. This isn't usually in his range of interests - currently yoyo tricks. But he's given it lots of thought. He wants to understand where the solid land lies. And he does understand that it felt very different at his former school, and that that is the way he wants to be in life.

Cross-Country Runs

As predictable as Christmas lights going up, as swallows returning home, comes another event, ringed black on the calender, and spoken of with bated breath in our household 'The school cross-country run.' 
'You'd have to do it if we were in UK too' I say in bracing tones to First and SecondBorn.  'We've all been there.'

But that's not quite true.  For here we are at altitude, 5500 foot up, where the running is harder. The runs are longer - 4k for nine-year old SecondBorn, 5k for twelve year old Firstborn. And while the littlies start racing in an 830am chill, by the later races, the tropical sun is full out. Not quite the same as my be-drizzled runs round Swansea's (sealevel) Singleton Park.

Like the London Marathon or the Tour de France, it is gripping to watch.  Inspirational, uplifting, to cheer lithe whippets on top of their game gliding home a lap ahead of the rest of the field.  Watching blythe, innocent year two girls, skipping in their first few paces, bunches bobbing in the breeze.  But like the Tour de France, by lap two you see the grim carnage etched on many faces.  The innocent year two faces, tears streaming, life hasn't been like this before. The plumper kid at the back of the pack - as she knows she will be from last year and the year before that - plodding onwards but singled out, despite everyone's best efforts.

I'm not against cross country per se. I'm not against pushing yourself. I'd even call myself a (very sporadic, lapsed) runner. But I am out there, on the barricades, shouting and tearing up paving stones, against competitive cross country in the third week of term, after an eight week winter break.  In First and Secondborn's first year here, this was the point where they pleaded, tears in eyes, streaming noses, PLEASE let us go back home. Secondborn, deer in the headlights from transition from one country to the next, didn't yet know the name of a single child in his class. Firstborn was eloquent and accurate that she was already being pushed to the limit struggling into school each day feeling this overexposed and insecure.  Why should she expose herself still further when she felt she had no safety nets of friends?  We wouldn't allow it in Maths, - annual ritual public immolation of the poorest performers.  Why is it acceptable in a physical setting?

The school would say - and do - but we need to have the school cross country now, so we can send the best runners to the Nairobi-wide and the national heats later in the week. I'm not against competition, but we all KNOW who the best runners are.  And we're proud to be associated with them, and wish them well.  But for the middle-ranking runners in my family, I'd rather they weren't put off running itself by public competition so early in the season.  Couldn't we send off the good runners to compete without a pre-test - and save the public cross country and parents and timings and medals and all for the end of term, when its more in the stride of the majority?

So how is a school cross country different in Kenya?  Firstborn failed to finish yesterday. Came shuddering and supported by a friend to the steps where I was sitting, awaiting her plodding but triumphal finish. I assumed she was overheated, had gone too fast. Was surprised she'd managed 4.5k to then collapse without finishing.  Until she got her breath back, calmed down, some twenty minutes later.  Nearing the home straight she prepared for her sprint finish. To be told by the teacher counting laps
'You can't finish yet. You've got another lap (another kilometre) to do.' 
In vain to protest that she'd run with the same peers all through. That she - and I, an anxious spectator - had been counting.
'Didn't you argue the point?' I asked later.
'What's the point. You know him. He's never going to admit he might have been wrong, even if he knows he was.'
So Firstborn burst into floods of tears. Couldn't bear the thought of a sixth kilometre, alone. Of finishing, not midfield, but exposed at the tail, in full sight of all.  When she knew she'd run what she should have.  And when the Head of PE appeared, was offered the choice of withdrawing now, within 200 metres of the finish, or of running the sixth kilometre.

So she opted out.

Mistakes happen everywhere. Its a major operation to count 300 kids and their laps. Attention to detail isn't at its Germanic peak in Kenya.  Secondborn, a stronger but equally reluctant runner, reported with glee
'I won't need to go to the Nairobi-wide heats, because X and Y came tenth and eleventh because they'd each missed a lap, - so they have to go to Kenton now instead!'

But in Kenya, for many teachers, what the teacher says, goes. It's a power thing, a hierarchy. Mwalimu knows best, even on matters outside the subject curriculum.  No arguing. I think it matters to accept that on many things we only have a partial perspective. That we may be wrong. Science may yet prove different. On some things, shock horror, the child may know best. It doesn't impune your manhood to accept this. But I can see why Firstborn assessed this as a battle she wasn't going to win.  Rocks and hard places. Giving in gracefully.

But as a stroppy Mum its a hard lesson for me to learn. I can't get away from how things SHOULD be, aka, how I am used to things being, aka, how they once were, back home, back then. Firstborn has adapted, learned some of the lessons of happy survival in Kenya. And in this too I, her mother, am trailing behind, in the rear.

Widening Participation, Kenyan style

AimHigher was a major initiative to get 50% of UK youth into higher education. In particular it targeted those who'd be the first generation in university in their family, whether Bangladeshi young people from Tower Hamlets, white working class men, or those from the lowest socio economic groups still least likely to consider university education.  We ran summer schools to show the fun and interactive side of university, sent staff to our nearby mosques to calm the fears of elders, and thence their parents, so Bangladeshi girls might be allowed to take up their places, supported first year students to return to their sink-school comprehensives to run workshops to encourage younger students.  It was an inspiring programme, even just as a staff member. It changed futures.

Widening participation in education in Kenya is a whole new ballgame.  The groundbreaking introduction of Free Primary Education (FPE) in 2003 opened basic education to those who, previously had been unable to pay the school fees.  Children who'd been forced to drop out, re-enrolled.  Children who'd been forced to drop out, re-enrolled, undaunted by the fact that they were now adults.  There are 1.3 million more people (some 15% more) in primary education today than in 2004.

On a trip to the National Museum recently I watched a Kenyan school group where some lads, in late adolescence, towered over their tiny preteen classmates.  A 40 year old mother of two, who had been working as a hawker, returned to primary school two years ago, and has just been allocated a place at a girls high school (see picture).  But now this massive influx have reached KCPE, the primary school leaving exam, on which fiercely competitive places for the four years of high school are allocated.

There are almost 750,000 students who took KCPE in 2010.  They are competing for 4517 places at the state funded top performing secondary schools (the 'national' schools).   In the past, though,pupils at private schools are only 15% of all those taking the exam, they've taken 30% of the 4000 places at the elite state schools. 

Even where pupils from state schools have been allocated a place at an Alliance High School or Moi Girls, in practice, the fees (75,000 KSh/term) are far, far, beyond what most families can afford. The government does help out, - it offers 10,000 a term towards the fees, - but still a long, long way short.  So the pupil has to give up their place and opt for a (lesser-ranked) cheaper provincial or local school closer to home.  Several of my students have spoken of their pride, of the pride of their whole village, when the letter came inviting them to attend a national school.  One lad then wrote of his father delivering him on the first day of term, not at the national school he'd dreamed of for years, but without warning at the humble district school which the family could afford. Of him spending the first day at the new school in floods of tears of distress and disappointment.

So this year the government is adopting positive discrimination at selection to seek to redress the balance for state school pupils.  The comparisons are horrific. Where primary pupils in the very best private schools might be in classes of 1:20 pupils, in the state schools a teacher would frequently have a class of 100 primary pupils.  The government is short of 60,000 teachers.  A state school is allocated around 1000 KSh, around £8, per head, per year, for all resources for each pupil.  Hard to compete on equal terms in an exam where students are then ranked nationally, from number 1 at primary level, presumably to number 749,999.  Again, my students proudly quote, five years on, pride still untarnished, their grade at KCPE - 'I got 417/500 at KCPE, I was ranked third in Nyanza Province'.  It matters here, where education is literally the way out of the slum.

So the government is adopting different benchmarks in selecting students from different modes of schooling. In 2011, in a major reversal, only 1224 candidates from private schools will join national schools, while 3293 will come from state schools who have taken most of the children under FPE.  You can imagine the outrage. The letters are about to go out. Pupils report to school on 30 January.  Parents are waiting with bated breath.

Children who've been in classes of a hundred are maybe going to be told that they are among some of the best in the country. Tragic if they can't progress to take up their place, but a source of lifelong pride nonetheless.

And when people in the UK grumble why is money being spent on aid, when the NHS, UK education, councils and social services are being pared to the bone, one of my answers - despite the education fraud here - is the impact of Free Primary Education (which is mainly being funded by the Kenyan government anyhow).  Of the seismic shift for young people, and lifelong learners.  Official statistics show that each year around 200,000 young people still take KCPE and just disappear off the books, into the countryside, as one of my students said sadly, 'To a future of digging drainage ditches and fishing.' But in eight years the numbers going on to high school have increased from 47% to 72% this year.  Sadly, many won't be able to afford to go to their first choice school for which they have won places, - but nonetheless what an achievement to trumpet.  Its a New Deal for our generation to be proud of.  And for each individual, a future with greater hope in a country without safety nets.

Dreaming Spires & Sweaty Fantasies

Educational choices have dominated many chats with mates over the last eight years. Before the kids were at pre-school, we agonised together about primary schools, who got in where, and weighed up how many of the similar-sized kids on the playground would live closer to PrimeChoicesOne, Two & Three.  Then came the long slow burn to secondary school. Faith school, closest comprehensive, exercising furtherflung choice, running the risk of falling short and getting SinkSchool, single sex lottery, or the high wire exams and auditions to PreDreamingSpires?  But then we dodged the secondary bullet by leaving UK at the end of year 5, for the land of prep schools (ages 7-13), and a heady year of naive bliss.

Uh oh, but now, part way through year 7, when UK mates are leaning back, feet under - or even on the table, here, brows are ever more furrowed, conversations heated, and we're back into the fray. And here the dilemmas are more complex still: stay with British curriculum (work towards GCSEs to make transfer back to UK easier, continuation of lots of sports, but either 90 minute commutes each way plus a very long day or weekly boarding); switch to the international school (close, well resourced, but on American system till International Bacc, so no pre-GCSE preparation, and no chance to strut those hockey skills so honed over the last year. American accents and misspellings. And completely completely different holidays, so in the summer ChildOne would be off from Labour Day till mid August and ChildTwo from end July till mid September). Or, Apocalypse Now, out from the nest, boarding in another country - South Africa, UK.

Each camp has its advocates and groupies. And there, like a pinball between them all, I bounce, bewildered by the terrifying implications, which go beyond the colour of the uniform and what-did-you-think-of-the-Head? to our babe-in-arms having compulsory Monday-Friday sleepovers each week.

Get a grip, I thought. Get school visiting again. Why not start smallscale and scope the issues with a talk on Boarding School: the UK perspective run by a visiting marketing director from UK public school at a nearby hotel? We KNOW we're all staying in the same country, so it won't startle the horses in the way the more realistic options might.

But at the posher end of the market choosing a secondary school can become a Lifestyle Choice for Parents, the stuff of glossy magazines and unlived aspirations. Kick off: sushi and smart canapes by the lit swimming pool of DesignerHotel. And I grew spellbound by the pitch and the opportunities. Not that this had been the stuff of my dreams, nor those of FirstBorn: 'we have two shooting ranges, one for claypigeons, one for rifles'... How much can termly extras run to? 'Well, it all depends. Some children bring their own horses, so of course the additional charge of livery on site can be considerable.' But wow, 20 music ensembles. 26 pupils competing at national level in a sport. Truly personalised teaching: a semi-pro icehockey star who is shipped all round the country for his matches and has his timetable fitted around his availability. Stellar exam results for a student body that doesn't take entrance exams. Whopping fees of course. And children leaving home at 13 to spend those weekends when the school is closed with for-profit guardians.  But a pandora's box of a pitch, which opened my mind to lurid never-before-dreamed-dreams of an addled & dangerous kind.

Next morning at work, our highflying students present themselves en masse. They've come to Nairobi from all over the country for the first of their two SAT tests. They've each come top in their district in the Kenyan exams, but high SAT scores would increase their chances of a scholarship to a US university.  Where US students would have been doing practice tests over the last two years, where schools hire SAT coaches and send students on summer workshops to improve scores, many of ours have pushed the boat out to club together in threes to buy one practice manual. Tensions are high. You have to mark your SAT paper with the colleges to which you want your results sent.  It costs 800 KSh - around £6 to add each extra name after the test - a sizeable amount for the students, so in reality today is the last day to change their choices. But without access to internet, reference guides, prospectuses or guidance, for most, today is the first chance they've had to discuss their choices, and the realism of their choices with anyone.

70 students, 5 networked computers, one with access to a printer, some statistical handouts we'd compiled and 3 reference guides, one from 2000 and two I bought on amazon and shipped in from abroad.  Half an hour on the computer per student to research a bit further. The students attended workshops we ran in the summer, where Kenya's Harvard grads spoke of their experiences, and so we fear a massive spike in applications to Harvard. Last year they accepted 4 Kenyan applicants. What if we can't persuade a spread of applications to maximise success for all?  What about fallback choices?  If it's all a punt in the dark anyway, why not go with four dream scenarios, - Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Cornell - the so-called Ring of Death option, who take 1 in 10 applicants. Or do you dare to break away from the crowd, wildly enhance your chances of entry, but possibly end up as one of 5 international students at a small college in the Mid West?  How would YOU go about prioritising universities in a foreign country in a few pressurised hours?

'Sweaty' is the word used by US admissions tutors for applications with too desperate a yearning tone. And the day was a sweaty, though a very moving, one. A day to seek to manage expectations. To remind students that whatever happens now, study abroad could remain an option for later, for postgraduate level. Telling students, seemingly for the first time, how much they have to be proud of. Yes, for their exam success, but more that they achieved them from a low-rated, low-resourced district school. To encourage them that their time as a peer counsellor working with other students with HIV is an application essay well worth writing. The student who kept chickens and ran a market stall selling his eggs after school to pay his secondary school fees. Students speaking of how their teachers were scared and reluctant to write them references, fearing that they wouldn't be able to do it well enough, that admissions tutors in the US would laugh at them. We'll be phoning reluctant referees next week to talk them through the process. Coaching applicants through the hidden heffalump traps of the questions. How 'why do you want to go to Yale? means 'Why (that isn't cliched) and what do you offer to us?' 

Its the stuff of dreams. Will we get Cinderella to the ball?  Our students are brilliant, determined in a way very few in the UK need to be, committed, and such impressive individuals. But the forms require sophistication, polish, and an ability to package your story. Here's hoping that native wit, determination and the best possible try with the resources you have might just win through for a few.