Preform Entrance Exam

Prospective students and parents are beginning to arrive!

Saturday, September 15th was the main day for prospective students to come and take the preform entrance exam.  The exam has sixty questions: forty in math and twenty in English. Many students, most along with their parents, arrived to give it a try.  It was an exciting day for me, as the students who were accepted would soon be my students. I tried to talk to as many of them as possible, but most were quite shy and rather nervous that day.  

Waiting to get started...

They had two and a half hours to take the exam, and then the teachers gathered around a table, grading as quickly as we could while the students and teachers waited to hear the results.  I helped for a bit, but the other teachers were able to work much faster without me as they’ve done this before and could speak in Swahili together, so I got out of the way and helped in sorting out the application forms instead.  

The regular school year starts in January, but students finishing Form 7 (the last year of primary school) take a major national exam during the summer and then have the last term of the year free.  So, we (and I assume other private schools must do it as well, as no one seems surprised by it) have a nine-week course for prospective students from the end of September through November. This is a great chance to get to know the students and make sure they will be a good fit for the school both academically and socially, and helps to get everyone on the same page (they come from a variety of primary schools of varying degrees of academic rigor and from across the country) so that in January they will be prepared for Form 1 work.  While as a private school there are school fees, we do offer scholarships to students who qualify but come from difficult circumstances.

At the end of the day, we had a list of nearly forty students who were invited to attend preform and, assuming that they pass their classes in preform, become students at Alpha Omega full-time in January.  Preform will begin September 24th; I’m looking forward to getting to know them all!

Heading the hear the results announced!