How it all works at The School of St Jude

The most frequent question I am asked is how it all works here. Before I left, I had a vague guess for it all but really, I was guessing because I knew only what I had read on the website (www.schoolofstjude.co.tz) and the piece on Australian Story, a weekly series on ABC in Australia (www.abc.net.au)

Now that I've been here a couple of weeks, I've a much better idea, so here's the spiel.

The School of St Jude is for students who have are bright/ motivated AND are very poor. Let’s face it, unless you’re very rich here, chances are you’re pretty poor. It’s just a question of how poor. In any case, above two pre-requisites and both must be met. The academic year here is from January to early December (it’s the Southern Hemisphere remember). From August/ September every year, there are entrance exams for prospective pupils every Friday. In the last year there have been as many as a fifteen hundred pupils queueing each Friday for around 20 places, which are given every week over around 7 weeks (there are around 140 new students admitted each year, broken down into five classes of 28). The exam is a basic maths and reading test. If the student passes, he or she must come back the following morning with certain paperwork. If they don’t pass, they can re-sit the exam the following Friday if they choose.

Those students who have met the academic requirements now have to produce certain paperwork in order to qualify for the next part of the entrance process. So on the Saturday they must bring things like a birth or baptismal certificate, copy of any academic records/ old school tests. This seems to be where the problems arise... Because the school is free for students and is gaining a fantastic reputation, parents are desperate for their children to study here. So it seems that they try every trick in the book. Some send older children to sit the exams for a younger one, to ensure they pass the written exam. This becomes apparent when the school compares old academic records with the recent exam and the handwriting is different!

It would appear too that the forging of official documents isn’t a problem either. Birth and baptismal certificates are doctored all too often (some are better than others at it). And then there are the children who are far older than they say, in attempt to get into a class. The only way of telling really, if the paperwork is in order, is to look at their height. Which is unfortunate for tall children, especially those from the Masai families as they are frequently tall.

The main problem is that Africa is not a country where paperwork is meticulously issued and kept. Many children are orphaned or one of many, or they’re fostered out to relatives, and they have no official paperwork. Others don’t know exactly how old they are or when their birthday is, and many others are very small or tall for their age. So ascertaining a child’s age isn’t a matter of checking the relevant documentation. And although, a lack of paperwork doesn’t mean they aren’t entitled to come to the school, there must be some system to sift out the most worthy students!

By the time the paperwork process is complete, the list has been greatly whittled substantially because so many can’t substantiate facts, or worse still many have been crossed off the list as have been shown to be lying about something.

Those who passed the exam and produced the relevant paperwork need to know prove their financial status to qualify for the “poor” part of the test. They receive a house visit – this is called a “house check” at the school. The aim of this visit is to establish how poor the family actually are. Someone from the school goes along to a child’s house, usually with an interpreter, whereupon they complete paperwork about the financial circumstances of the family – they will check what the house is made of (wood, mud or concrete), if they rent or own it, if they have running water (most don’t), whether either parents are working and how many siblings there are. It would seem that most mothers work in the market. They usually sell a few vegetables that they have grown. It seems that 90% of what they grow is for a subsistence living and the remainder is sold at the market.

At the student's house, the St Jude staff member needs to make sure that (a) the child lives here (many borrow relatives houses which are smaller than their own) and (b) that they haven’t removed things from the house to exaggerate their poverty. Of course, knowing if someone is in a friend or relatives is very hard. You can count the people in the house and check that it corresponds with the paperwork they completed. The problem is that families are larger than the obvious. Children often refer to their older siblings as brothers or sisters, but younger siblings are “babies” or not mentioned at all! Relatives are sometimes considered family members and sometimes not! Many children live with relatives… it’s all very confusing.

At the end of the day, what the school wants to do is establish if children are poor and bright enough. It seems awful to have to knock back someone because they don’t have one piece of paper or because something might be forged. Almost everyone around here is poor and desperate. And for me there is no question that every one of these children deserves an education. At first I was sad that only the bright children got in, but I guess if you have to choose, it makes sense to take those with most potential. Hopefully eventually as the school grows, those with less potential will get in. But you have to draw the line somewhere, and because of this system, there are now almost 700 Tanzanians receiving the finest education .

And it really is a fine education! The Tanzanian education system is a fairly grueling one. Classes are enormous (with at least 50 people per class), there is a charge for tuition, books, uniforms and there is no transport, so most students walk. And there are no meals. At this school, children get all of that free, as a part of their sponsorship. It means that they get the whole package. If we were relying on them to pay for books or uniforms or transport it just wouldn't be viable. Many of them don't even have the money to buy a mozzie net!

Because government schools are underfunded and have few resources and teachers, weaker students are weeded out quickly. At the end of Standard 4 when students are around 10, they must sit government exams. They have to then sit them again at the end of Standard 7 (around 13 years old). In order to get into secondary school, students have to pass both exams. Many don't make it past that point, which is the aim really, because there are so few secondary schools and even less funding.

Which is why it's so important that at schools like St Jude, students are given the best education so they CAN make it to secondary school. Only by doing that do they have a chance to reverse the poverty cycle that for so long has kept Africa poor.