MCS teachers visit Mustardseed

During October half term, Mustardseed Junior School – our partner primary school in Uganda – was visited by three teachers from Magdalen College School: Charles Newbury (Deputy Head of the Junior School), Louise Mehrabian (Head of Learning Support) and Joy Brown (Junior School Learning Support). They had a wonderful time, with a mutually beneficial exchange of teaching techniques and a particular focus on special educational needs.

The 20-acre conservation area in which the school is located now has a beautiful teaching circle where the pupils can study the remarkably eco-diverse plants, mammals, reptiles and insects.

The new eco-farmer, Fred Opiro, has only been at Mustardseed for three months and is already feeding the whole school from the site, with maize, cassava, beans, bananas and a great variety of vegetables. The children now receive fruit and greens with every meal, without the need for any chemical fertilisers or pesticides. Fred is also working on establishing a worm farm and a soldier fly larva farm, two state-of-the-art sustainable farming systems that will provide a steady stream of fodder for the stock animals and natural fertiliser for the crops.

The livestock includes 30 goats, 40 pigs, 12 ducks and one cow, but this will shortly increase to eigth or nine of the local longhorn cows, enough to supply the whole school with fresh milk daily. There are also two ‘guard geese’ who cackle up a storm if someone they don’t know wanders into the farmyard!

The Waynflete Field, funded by the MCS community, is now being used by local residents every Sunday afternoon for football matches, cementing a sense of goodwill and attracting more potential pupils to the school. Indeed, the trip involved a Staff vs Pupils netball match on the field, with Charles and Jess Napier (Mustardseed Educational Advisor) coming off the bench. With a noticeable height advantage, the teachers won the game 9-3.