I came in at a time when no parent wanted to hear anything to do with Kivaywa school and the picture painted was that all previous principals were failures, I quickly assembled my team of teachers, board and support staff for a crucial meeting to try to find out how best we could re-instil the trust back to the community, they are the main stakeholders-Benard Wamanga Principal Friends Kivaywa High School
After what seemed like a case of parents losing hope in one of their main schools within Matete sub-county in Kakamega district, a new dawn has finally come for the institution after the arrival of the new principal who has transformed the school, he has rejuvenated the hopes of the local community and stakeholder at large.
Friends Kivaywa High school was on the brink of closure after numerous cases of insecurity including theft of property and even loss of lives. Insecurity became the order of the day at the institution which saw the community start to pull their children out of the institution in favour of other schools.
Insecurity was so intense that it took the initiative of the area MP the then Kakamega Deputy Governor Professor Kutima among other political leaders, accompanied BY a multi-agency security team to visit the school and try to unravel the mystery behind the numerous mysterious incidences that were happening. But all is well now with the coming on board of Benard Wamanga, the new principal who has overhauled the school’s bad reputation in just one year into an admirable and shining school.
Mr Wamanga agrees that when he walked in the relationship between the school and the local community was rock bottom and very unwelcoming with the latter accusing the management of the institution of having failed to professionally manage their best school in the sub-county.
I came in at a time when no parent wanted to hear anything to do with Kivaywa school and the picture painted was that all previous principals were failures, I quickly assembled my team of teachers, board and support staff for a crucial meeting to try to find out how best we could re-instil the trust back to the community, they are the main stakeholders in the school, and several key points were put across for implementation out of which it reverberated well and slowly we started seeing some rays of hope from parents and even sponsor church.
The school boosts a population of 1,373 students with a candidature of 270 boasting of six streams with Form ones clocking seven streams, it is destined to become a ten-streamed institution in two years considering the trend of admission going on currently
He says together with his able team he managed to encourage the students and teachers that there was hope after which he carefully worked on the strengthening of morale standards through guiding and counselling team that later ensured that any form of indiscipline was handled strictly and professionally.
I came in when the school had no perimeter wall around it and this led to a lot of sneaking in and out of school but we have been able to work on that gradually and so far we have put in place mechanisms and measures that will see us improve on our security and academic results in this year’s exams after we managed to attain a mean of 5.7 in 2021 as we target 7.5 this year.”
The school boosts a population of 1,373 students with a candidature of 270 boasting of six streams with Form ones clocking seven streams, it is destined to become a ten-streamed institution in two years considering the trend of admission going on currently.
“We are expecting to hit 1,800 as form ones comes through early next year without including the junior secondary ones that we have set aside three classrooms for and we are hopeful that through our partnership with our stakeholders we will take this school far, way more than ever before”
He thanked the chaplaincy through the Quaker church that stood firm to ensure sanity was restored to the school and the harmony being witnessed between the teaching and non-teaching staff has also been of beneficial value to the growth of the school.
The school has also been on the co-curriculum map performing in Music up to the county level, with trophies in drama and badminton among other games.
Next year we will fully participate in more games as Covid-19 disrupted the calendar of events and this year it was done in a hurry with no proper time to plan and funding was a challenge altogether.
He thanked the school management which has stood firm in ensuring programmes are put in place to put the school back on its academic map but hinted that the school has a shortfall of 30 teachers from the expected 70 TSC ones.
By Andanje Wakhungu
