The leading girls’ school St Annes’ Girls Boarding Primary and Junior Secondary Mumias has invested in farming, thanks to the Competence Based Curriculum (CBC), to help learners get first-hand knowledge and benefits.
The school with a history of producing impressive results in national exams has a super project for the students that is doing pretty well since it was started a year ago.
The school has a reasonable number of kienyeji chickens, pigs and dairy cows on the farm that supplement income and also serve as a learning project for the students.
According to the Parents Association (PA) chairman Mr Peter Guya, the project started as a pilot one for CBC and has grown to a bigger project to the extent that they have a reasonable number of birds.
“When we started the project, we had less than 100 birds but we have over 500 birds at the moment,” says Mr Guya.
According to Guya, CBC students get the best knowledge on farming as they practically take them through the system as the school has everything that is needed for them.
“Quality education is very expensive and we chose to go the hard way of starting a project that will impact permanently on the lives of the learners unlike explaining everything to them. Besides being used for learning purposes, the school has also been generating income from the project as they sell eggs, birds and milk to the locals which has supplemented the school income,” he said.
He added, “We have school projects that we run without asking for support from our dear parents and we fund them through our school’s farming project which is doing super justice to us. We produce over 6 crates of eggs daily and several litres of milk which we sell to the public and we hope to continue improving on the quantity and quality.”
High demand for the school’s products from the locals has also kept them afloat and this motivates them to improve service delivery.
The school farm is closely monitored as the school outsources the services of a professional farmhand who takes charge of the birds, especially in feeding as they are very complex and need attention.
The project has expanded the income base through the sale of eggs and birds.
“We have birds at different stages of growth and members of the public are allowed to purchase mature birds at a paltry Ksh900,” he concluded.
The school headteacher Sr. Cyrillah Sanya avers that the project has been a blessing as it generates some income.
“We are glad of the achievements so far achieved and we hope to make it better going forward,” says Sr. Sanya.
She adds, “We have seen some parents complaining of CBC being too expensive as they are asked to provide eggs, and birds to their children for learning purposes but we at St Anne’s have our farm and our pupils learn from the products already in it, which makes us stand out.”
Those interested in getting birds or eggs are asked to visit the school and get quality kienyeji eggs and birds at a reasonable price.
