African Girls Find School Can Bring Happiness - Not Just Passing Grades.


A group of young African girls aged 13-16 from poor, rural families in Uganda were very fortunate to find an opportunity to go to a girl's secondary school where they could excel.
Many Ugandan children are age 15 by the time they complete primary school, due to poverty and/or illness or other turmoil within the family. Although from poor families, these girls were very motivated and had goals they wanted to achieve. This school was unusual because, in addition to giving girls a good education, its curriculum included an effective program to improve their learning ability and help them reduce stress. Poverty is very stressful. Before 2007, when Uganda introduced a policy that all students could have access to secondary education, most of those who could not go to school were girls and poorer children. The expansion of secondary education rapidly increased enrollment. Class sizes soared reaching 70 to 150 students! But even after this expansion, less than a quarter of Uganda's children of secondary school age were enrolled. At Ideal Girls High School the group of girls could study the subjects needed to prepare them for passing the national exams. The standard O-level exam includes biology, chemistry, physics, physical education, math, English language, geography, and history. This exam, taken after the first four years of high school, was very important—passing it would qualify them to attend the last two years of high school. Yet, something more than passing an exam would become a treasure to them. A wise Ugandan educator pointed out that the most pressing concern in education was not academics. Public school secondary education was too focused on passing exams at the expense of crucial life and social skills, he said. 




Ideal Girls High School embraces the idea that the foremost and ultimate goal of education should be to develop the student's full potential: to learn, to create, to think, to analyze, and to live a full and happy, healthy life. At Ideal Girls High, while students are receiving traditional academic knowledge and enjoying sports, music, and the arts, they are also learning a technique that increases their ability to learn and reduces the enormous stress experienced by students preparing for national exams. They learn the Transcendental Meditation technique.




When you ask IGHS students what they like best about the school, they typically answer that it's ''the standard of education and the practice of meditation.'' After learning TM, the girls began to appreciate their daily meditations. Students say TM helps them be happier, healthier, and study better. ''When I have meditated,'' said one of them, ''I feel free and relaxed, and enjoy participation in all activities. Meditation makes me happy. I can read my books better after meditation and I can understand well. I can make useful decisions on what to do and what not to do. I love my Transcendental Meditation program so much. Thank you with a lot of kindness.One of the girls reports, ''I used to get angry, but when I meditate, now I don't. I don't have headaches any more. That helps me be able to study. When I meditate I feel my body having enough energy, my mind settles.I can do,I can achieve the desire to do important things.Sometimes a girl's commitment to education can be tested. In Uganda, girls usually get married in their mid-teens. There is a custom for a suitor to pay the family a ''bride price'' to marry the girl. A bride price is a substantial sum to anyone in poorer areas. Girls are, in this arrangement, a financial asset to a family and are expected to marry when their parents find them a husband. Yet, some students, determined to continue their education rather than getting married, manage to stay in school. At the end of 10th grade, students take the O-level national exam. Since 2009, 92% of the IGHS girls have passed the exams. This is remarkable for a school that has open admissions. By passing this exam, students become eligible for the final two years of secondary education. The Ideal Girls High School in Uganda offers young girls a safe and secure opportunity for quality secondary education.The students say that they like the ''good environment, best for girl child education.''It is a non-sectarian school that fully supports students practising their own religion.


















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