By Daphne Kato
The year, in May, Kampala Parents’ School marks 15 years since the school became part of the Ruparelia Group- a reputable business conglomerate with investments in education, hospitality, financial services, real estate, broadcasting and agriculture.
Under the Ruparelia Group, the school has undergone both an ideological and structural transformation.
Ideologically, the school has reoriented its focus to becoming centre of balanced academic excellence as reflected in our mission i.e. “to facilitate first-class education and civilisation to children with and from outside Uganda with the hope that there will be a better world community tomorrow“.
This shift which is very visible in our all-round curriculum, is backed by the school’s proprietors’ conviction that “the growth of any nation, lies in the hands of the young generation and the responsibility to mould them into useful citizens is on us, the adult generation.”
This paradigm shift- is in support of both the Ministry of Education and Sports’ as well as the Government of Uganda’s policy goals and objectives i.e. strengthening Uganda’s sustainable wealth creation, employment and inclusive growth, requires equipping our children with globally competitive skills, relevant knowledge and positive attitudes.
The schools’ proprietors and management, believe that a diversely-skilled human resources is the major driving force for every country’s development and that developing useful industrious human resources needs laying a strong foundation right from childhood.
With this conviction, the school, in 2010 started on an aggressive physical expansion and quality enhancement programme.
The Ruparelia Group between 2010 and 2012 invested in excess of $7 million, physically expanding the school from just a 4-acre establishment to a 13-acre world class centre of educational excellence.
The expansion exercise saw, 35 new spacious classroom blocks added to the school, creating a total of 110 classrooms. With 110 classrooms and an installed capacity of up to 3,000 kids, each class has an average of 40 to 50 children and a teacher to pupil ratio of 1:25.
The expansion also came with 2 new state-of-the-art and well stocked libraries, 2 ICT rooms with smart boards, 2 fully-equipped science labs, 2 home science labs, 1 media room, 1 stitching room with enough sewing machines, 1 music room, 1 drama room and a 2,000-seater multipurpose hall to double both as the dining hall and recreation centre.
We also constructed a new sports centre, with a swimming pool, basketball and netball courts.
A new purpose-built pre-primary section with a capacity of 700 children and a day care centre with a capacity of up to 200 toddlers was built. A 2-kilometre wall fence was also erected around the 13-acre school complex to boost security and safety.
The expansion phase, was completed in 2012, making Kampala Parents’ one of the largest and most equipped educational centres with an installed capacity of 3,000 pupils in the upper primary school section and 700 kids in the pre-primary and day care sections.
With the physical expansion complete, the school also underwent several staff and management changes, so as to be able to support our new orientation of producing all-round and balanced children, but also meet stakeholder expectations.
Kampala Parents’ gets 100% first grade pupils
The 234 pupils who sat the UNEB Primary Leaving Exams, were therefore more than special children, as they represented the first group of pupils who joined P.1 in 2012- soon after the completion of the expansion phase and therefore had a chance to complete the entire 7-year cycle under our instruction.
Kampala Parents’ Principal, Ms Daphne Kato poses with some of the best pupils in the 2018 PLE. She believes that the education system should focus on balancing academic excelling and life-skills.
That, the entire 234 pupils passed in first grade, means the whole world to us!
With 100% pupils in first grade, Kampala Parents’ performance is more than 3 times above the average first-grade performance for all Kampala schools- 29.6 percent.
We are eternally grateful to the parents, our teachers, management and the proprietors for enabling us to achieve this milestone!
Certainly as we start 2019 academic year, that also coincides with the 15th Anniversary under new management, we are more than energised but at the same time, challenged as well to do even much better. We believe with our world-class facilities and the immense support from both our parents and teachers, as well as our proprietors, the sky is the limit.
We call upon all our parents to continue being involved and taking keen interest in the education of their children. On our part, we promise to continue working with and through the Parents Advisory Board to continuously review and improve our quest to provide holistic education to our learners.
Finally, we wish all our 2018 finalist students the best in life and remind them to continue working hard, putting our school on the map and be role models, like all those other students that have left before them.
At the same time, we wish to remind and request all parents- both existing and former parents, as well as all our former students who are now parents to avail us the opportunity to nurture and groom your children.
WE STRUGGLE FOR THE FUTURE
Daphne Kato is the Principal, Kampala Parents School
