Students in Kenya (肯尼亚) are returning for their third term. They begin their school year in January and it is broken up into three terms. In Kenya, in the past, students were not required to attend school and the education was not free, either.
I taught math, English and physics at Chamasiri Secondary School while I was a teacher in Kenya. This school had four classrooms- one for each grade, Form l, Form 2, Form 3 and Form 4. They are equivalent (对等) to our 9th, l0th, 11th, and 12th grade. Teachers traveled from classroom to classroom instead of the students going from room to room. The Form 1 class had 60 students, Form 2 had 45, Form 3 had 30, and Form 4 about 12 students. The class sizes became smaller as the grades continued on. Why did this happen? Many families were very poor and couldn't afford the school fees (学费).
Most countryside schools in Kenya did not have a lot of money. As a result, there were very few textbooks for the students to use. I had seven math texts for my Form 2 class and 14 for the Form 1 class. Anything the students needed to know was put up on the blackboard and the students copied it down into their notebooks. The notebooks became the students' textbooks.
It's not easy for Kenya students to stick to school. The students study ten different subject areas at school. Some of them spend over an hour running home. They do chores at home and hopefully manage to find some time to study before it gets dark. Most families do not have electricity and may not even have candles for their children to study by.
Luckily, Kenya education has been becoming better and better in the past few years. I'm sure it will have a good future.
