This is the last week of the long school holidays – since the beginning of December – and the new school year starts on Monday. We have been preparing for our ‘Promoting School Health’ workshop, which is taking place in the 2nd week of term. This has involved researching the internet, preparing lesson plans, priming other experts to lead sessions, writing a participants’ handbook and buying resources to hand out on the day. This is a new skill for both of us and we agonise over every part of the workshop to ensure it will be OK!

Most of the time we have locked ourselves in a spare office in the district education department and tried to ignore all the comings and goings. This was quite easy to do except for a couple of days this week when the place was crawling with anxious headteachers. Why? It was the day that the school results for Primary Leaving Exam (PLE) results came out. These are of critical importance for Ugandan schools as well as the district, as they are used to grade both of them, and it was like A levels, GSCE’s and SATs results day all rolled into one.

Children are graded from 1 (highest) to 4 (lowest) and each school hopes to get as many 1’s as possible. The size of the smile on a headteacher’s face gets bigger with every grade 1. Conversely those with none hurry out! We tell them that it is about children doing their best and reaching their potential, as well as trying to include the 50% of children who drop out before they even get to PLE, but it seems to fall on deaf ears at this time of year.

James from Rwengoro school got 4 1’s, so he is very happy!