‘Overcrowding to blame for Sacred Heart’s poor results’

By PATRICK BEJA

Situated at the intersection between Archbishop Makarios and Liwatoni roads is the Sacred Heart school, Mombasa. We arrived at the Goan school recently during the feast of the sacred heart of Jesus.

Teachers told us they dedicate this day every year to prayer. A mass is presided over by priests within the school.

The primary and secondary schools were established in 1932 by Goans to provide education to the community, which was then sending its children to boarding schools in Goa, India.

In the process, many women were forced to relocate to Goa to take care of their children. This kept them away from their husbands and other family members working in Kenya.

The wind of political change in 1961, however, completely transformed the community school. Even the name had to be changed to Sacred Heart. The Africanisation programme and its uncertainty made many Indians leave the country. The community handed over the public school to the Catholic Church in Mombasa.

Crowded compound

“The Goan school has been a centre of excellence in the academic landscape because it had graduate teachers from Goa. Many of the students later trained in India and elsewhere and dominated the fields of law and medicine in Kenya,” says a member of the Goan community in Mombasa who preferred to remain anonymous.

Andrew Abreu, a Goan businessman and former student of the school, says the institution was once popular and attracted many students due to its association with the prominent Goan educationists.

Both the primary and secondary wings are burdened by the growing number of learners.

The school was born after the then Mombasa Liwali (ruler) Sir Ali bin Salim gave the Goan community land and laid the foundation stone for its construction on August 14, 1932.

At one point, the Portuguese funded the expansion of the school.

The primary section is teaming with 1,014 pupils while the secondary side has more than 600 students, all sharing a small compound.

“We have been struggling with the high population which has put a strain on furniture and other amenities. We urgently need to start a school feeding programme because about 300 of the pupils are orphans and cannot afford lunch,” the headmaster, George Ojiambo says.

The primary section recorded a mean score of 281 in last year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examination. There are 31 teachers, 24 of them hired by the Teachers Service Commission.

The primary school excelled to the national level in music and a French coral verse in 2011. It has also performed exceptionally well in athletics in Mombasa County.

The high school wing has also performed well in extra curricular activities, especially athletics and music.

The Sacred Heart High School principal, Veronica Marami says a lot has been done to restore its past glory.

She, however, says the compound is too crowded for the school to expand to four streams.

The mean score of the high school has dropped to a low of 3.5, translating to a D+.

Counselling sessions

“Girls and boys learn in separate classes to encourage concentration. They are happy that way. They are also more confident,” Ms Marami says.

She says the separation has encouraged parents to bring in more girls as it has curbed boy-girl relationships.

Each teacher also has a family of about 15 children to counsel and mentor.

This, she says, leads to smooth flow of information from the students to the administration.

“Children are from different backgrounds and share their problems with the teachers nurturing them. In this system, we are able to counsel them without difficulties,” she adds.

Ms Marami says when she was posted to the school in 2010, she found out some students were taking advantage of the day school to report as late as 9am: “We introduced school assemblies every day instead of Monday and Friday only. As a result, the students now report on time. Absenteeism has also gone down drastically,” she says.

In addition to the family model counselling, the school has pastoral service where a priest is usually invited to talk to the students.

For Muslim students, a room has been provided at the school for prayers.

Ms Marami says the school caters for all categories of students including those from the streets. The head student, Joseph Muliro admits he was once a street boy. What the school stands for is summarised in its motto ‘Knowledge Enlightens’.

The history of Goans in Kenya is long and winding. It goes back as far as 1865 with the arrival and establishment of businesses in Mombasa by a Mr de Souza and other early arrivals.

Goans had trickled into East Africa at the time of the Portuguese rule but at the turn of the last century, there was a greater influx. They came to Kenya as sailors, cooks, tailors, railway employees and clerks.

They are associated with the construction of the Uganda Railway.

Prominent Goans included Dr ACL de Souza, Dr Ribeiro, JM Nazareth, Pio Gama Pinto, Joseph Murumbi and Fritz de Souza.

Mr Murumbi became Kenya’s vice-president.