Our Partnership with Buhumba Primary School Uganda
Update 2022
We have been working with Buhumba Primary School since September 2013. The aim of the partnership working is to share educational experiences and learning. Over the years the children and staff have worked on many joint projects. The learning has been enhanced by reciprocal visits as the teachers have visited the partner schools. We have also held video conferences and have exchanged work and letters.
During the Covid pandemic Buhumba Primary School was closed for nearly 2 years. We kept in touch with the staff throughout this time.
In September 2022 Buhumba Primary School welcomed a new Headteacher, Mr Jackson Kyomukama. Mr Kyomukama is keen to work with us and has sent a greeting message.
'I call on everyone at St Peter's to give me support for the success of Buhumba Primary School. Keep coming here. The door is open for you all'
2019 - Connecting Classrooms Partnership
We are delighted that we have been awarded a British Council Grant to continue our work with Buhumba Primary School. We have planned a joint project looking at the environment and sustainable development.
Miss Bolton visited Buhumba during the summer holidays in 2019. Unfortunately, due to Covid we have been unable to complete the reciprocal visit.
Project Plan 2019-2021
As a partnership, we decided to work on hunger as a global goal for sustainable development that would be a jointly cooperative project. We carried out the zero-hunger project at St Peter’s Primary School and at Buhumba Primary School. The learning was shared in both schools. We started off by sharing the common types of foods eaten in both communities and ideas for how we could learn from one another to make an impact as global citizens. We decided on health and nutrition, growing our own to become sustainable. The children in both schools communicated through drawings, letters and photographs.
Buhumba Primary school is in the Kabale District of Uganda near the Rwandan border. The school is situated on the top of a hill overlooking Lake Bunyonyi. There are 700 children in the school with up to 100 children in some classes. There is no electricity or running water at the school and members of the local community are mainly subsistence farmers.
The Headteacher Jasper Magaba has been very proactive in supporting the partnership and in this time there have been many teacher exchanges and joint curriculum projects.
St Peter’s School began working with Buhumba Primary in 2013 when we first received a grant from the British Council. In this time letters have been exchanged between pupils, two teachers, Mrs Sykes and Miss Bolton have visited Buhumba in July 2014, and we have had very successful video conferences via Skype. The first year of our project involved pupils from each school making a book about their school to exchange during the visit. When Mrs Sykes and Miss Bolton visited Uganda they asked the children to draw pictures on fabric of ‘what is important to them’ resulting in the wonderful banners you can see displayed around school.
In June 2015 Irene a teacher at Buhumba School visited us. We enjoyed learning all about life in Buhumba. In August 2015 Miss Bolton visited Buhumba. Please see her report below.
Miss Bolton's visit to Buhumba August 2015
On my recent visit to Buhumba Primary School I was warmly welcomed by the staff, children and local community. As soon as I arrived I visited each classroom; the children were excited to ask lots of questions about our school and daily life. Despite it being the last week of term, the children still had the energy to carry out their wonderful traditional Bakiga singing, dancing and drumming. Of course I was not allowed to merely watch. Irene soon had me joining in much to the pupils' amusement.
The children in P6 (Primary 6) enjoyed participating in the curriculum project 'culture in a box' They enjoyed learning about British culture and helped me to collect items in order to create a box to represent the culture and daily lives of the people in their community. This will be shared with the children at St Peter's School to further develop their knowledge of the lives of the children at Buhumba Primary School.
I had fun teaching English, and the children enjoyed teaching me some words and greetings in the local Rukiga Language. The project resources kindly donated by the children at St Peter's were gratefully received and the children at Buhumba asked me to say "Webare" (Thank you)
Miss Bolton
