When I first found 2025’s Standard 4 class was the third class in our school to meet our standards of all students getting and A or B on the Tanzania scale, I made a quick plug in the year and review and a Facebook post. I have since gotten the complete numbers and evaluated our school against others and my heart could not be fuller and bursting with my need to brag about them.

First a little bit of back story for those who are just joining the blog. One of the biggest “arguments” I had at my first ministry I worked with in Tanzania had to do with Government standards and whether they were the goal or the minimums for us to achieve. Needless to say I felt they were the minimums we should shoot for. So when I switched ministries and joined Blessed2BlessU Ministries, Inc. and their efforts to build a school in the remote Maasai village, I was clear that I expected our school to have higher standards than those set by the government. When we first started the school officially, the teachers and headmaster at that time thought our standard was not attainable.

What is the Tanzania government standard? All of your subject scores added up must equal 60 Points or 10 Points per subject average based on a 50 point scale. To simplify your average across all subjects should be 20% correct using a 100 point scale (percentage). There are schools here where the school average is below 20% so I understand why they thought our scale was unattainable based on their experience.

The scale at Tumaini Evangelistic Pre & Primary School is as follows. 30 points or 60% is passing and we look at individual subjects not the cumulative of all your grades. Our first couple of classes that took the government exams came close with most students getting As or Bs and a couple still getting Cs. We got nothing below that.

We started putting pressure to hire better teachers and started to pay better salaries to get them. We pushed the school admin to focus on what was needed to improve our student’s grades and it ranged from additional class time to scholastic camps in the mid year break. I started evaluating our internal test scores like only and engineer can to help the staff and teachers to determine weak subjects to spend more time on. After we reached our goals we had parties for classes that meet the standard on Government exams, gave out more prizes for top students and occasionally recognizing improved students with prizes. We even gave out monetary bonuses after two government tests in a row where the students meet the standard to all staff not just teachers.

So that brings us to last year’s Standard 4 class that took the exams in October and the results were published this month. We had 24 students once again get all As and Bs on their Government exam which meant they got 60% and above (A=80-100, B=60-79). This was the first class where the class average was an A or 81%. We also had one student, Mary Michael, who got all As on her test scores for the first time.

In the Simanjaro District of the Manyara Region there are 107 Primary schools. We were #3 in the district with only 0.3 percentage points separating us from #2. 4 Schools in the district got an A (80-100), 10 schools got a B average (60-79), 25 schools got a C average (40-59), 59 schools got a D average (20-39) and 9 schools got less than 20 on their average. The district average was 38% and our average was 81%.

I also compare our school’s grades against other schools I have some working knowledge of. This is 5 private schools and 4 government schools. This was the first time we had the highest grade point average on this evaluation (one school in Arusha is normally first because a majority of the parents there finished school). We scored better than all the schools in all but two subjects. We were second in English by 1 point and second in Math by 3 points.

So I hope you understand I am bursting with pride over these students doing so well, because I am going to be honest I was worried about 4 of the students meeting our standard. As I start to wind down my time in Tanzania, I could not think of a better achievement for the school than this. Don’t get me wrong, we have other things that I am proud of. Like seeing our students lead worship on Friday. Having mission teams who were not here to work with our school but come to visit on Friday for our worship service because our students area joyous bunch. I am proud of the young people they are becoming, seeing them grow in leadership at the church and as prefects at the school.

Want to join us in making this wonderful school continue to impact lives in and around Kiruani, Tanzania, we still need about $7000 to fully fund our new office building so the teachers have a break room and a proper meeting room. You can contribute by sending a check Blessed2BlessU Ministries, Inc., PO Box 2016, Fremont, NC 27830 or online at https://www.paypal.com/donate/?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=NRZKPZM82UD6U.