School's out

I read today that teachers in the UK are going to strike over pay and workload. Here we are also in the midst of a strike by Kenyan teachers over pay and conditions. State state schools have been closed for weeks and thoughts that there might be a deal last week have quietly disappeared from the news. Here, the strike and associated debate has highlighted the challenges of delivering on a Presidential acceptance speech pledge to give every school child a laptop. Having seen inside a few primary schools when I was election monitoring in March, I have always found the laptop pledge hard to grasp. Most schools I saw were struggling to keep light bulbs in the ceiling lights, had one plug socket (at most) in a classroom and no obvious sources of backup power. Nor were there any lockers to keep books, let alone laptops safe. And there was certainly no internet connection. Plus The schools I saw were all in urban Nairobi which makes me wonder even more about how this initiative could work for children in rural schools. So I'm inclined to think the teachers have a point asking the Government to focus on the basics first.

But enough politics particularly as I'm only following that debate from the sidelines as the international school our kids are at is not affected. And anyway no one is there just now as we are already a week into the school holidays. As I'm sure happens for every child and every school, we have had our moments but on the whole it has been a good year for each of our three kids and they have all finished on a high, excited about their next teachers and classmates and looking forward to being back in September almost as much as they are looking forward to not being there for 2 months.

On the last morning of the school year I skived off early from a work team building work session to get to the kids' speech day. Having been last year I knew I could safely turn up a while into the proceedings and still get to see the important bits but I did start to get a bit anxious when stuck in traffic for much longer than even I had anticipated. I shouldn't have worried. An hour after the start, when I'd been safely seated for a while the speeches were just coming to an end- I have no idea why they have to take soooo long and I'm not even a bored child. Nor had I missed the musical delights of a Maroon 5 song played by 12 year olds with trumpet and sax or the rendition of Dolly Parton's Jolene by a couple of 13 year olds with an acoustic guitar. But at least I got to clap as both Katie and Matthew walked on to stage for their prizes - proud mum!

Luckily Jamie was only pleased for his siblings as he is still basking in his goalkeeping prowess which saw his team win the local football tournament the week before in a gripping (and not very comfortable mum viewing) final which ended in penalties. How does Andy Murray's mum do it?

But the end of term also brought more farewells to friends. One of Jamie's great friends is heading back to Paris and another is moving to Burundi so shirts have been scrawled on and email addresses exchanged. Our family chats about these departures and about what we will do when it's our turn to leave show me that whilst our kids, like most of us, like the known in life they are confident that they will make and keep friends wherever we go. I'm sure they would have felt that without this African adventure but I can't help thinking it will have boosted them a little along the way.