By Hilary Keingana
BUSHENYI; The Bishop of West Ankole Diocese, Rt. Rev. Johnson Twinomujuni, has challenged students to embrace discipline as the foundation of academic excellence and spiritual growth.
The Bishop made the call on Monday 28th september during the dedication service for Senior Four and Senior Six candidates of Ruyonza School, Bushenyi District.
Bishop Twinomujuni said girls’ secondary schools are currently the best performing because of their closeness to the church and high levels of discipline.
“The girls’ secondary schools are the best performing schools and the first reason is because they are close to church. You find them cooperating with us in church programs. We ask for unity among the school administrations for our schools to develop and instill discipline in students,” Bishop Twinomujuni said.
He noted that parents consider three key things before enrolling their children that are, academic performance, a safe learning environment free from strikes and discipline.
“Parents always have three things they think about before taking their children to a certain school and the first one is academic performance and another one is being in a good safe learning environment without strikes. Those schools that always have strikes, it means there are students without discipline. I don’t like hearing of strikes in church founded schools and students have to be responsible,” he said.
The Bishop defined discipline as moral, professional and academic, urging schools to properly orient new students on school standards, hygiene and morality.
“Discipline can be moral, professional, academic. As a student reports in the school, they should be oriented about the school standards mostly on hygiene, discipline and immorality. Students should be morally upright and this can be done when the school gets engaged in both curricular and co-curricular activities like debates, sports, dance and drama and that helps a student get discipline,” Bishop Twinomujuni added.
The Bishop commended the school’s leadership for the tremendous growth.
Ruyonza is one of the traditional schools founded by the church of Uganda-Diocese of West Ankole.
The Head teacher of Ruyonza School Arthur Taratwebirwe, said discipline has been the cornerstone of the school’s rapid growth.
“In the last four years, we had 370 students and now we have 1076 students and the biggest thing that brought us this far is discipline and that’s why parents trust us with children,” Taratwebirwe said.
He revealed that when he took over, Ruyonza was known for bad behavior, prompting him to outlaw escapism, alcohol consumption and teasing of new students.
“When I was posted here, they told me that Ruyonza students are badly behaved and on my first assembly I told these students about three things which included; escapism, teasing and drug abuse (alcoholism.) The students adhered to the rules and this tells you how the discipline of the school has improved,” he said.
Taratwebirwe said due to the increased enrollment, the school is now constructing new dormitories to solve the issue of congestion, adding two libraries to create more classroom space and has improved staff commitment and student welfare.
“We also have a committed staff and that’s why results have improved, we also improved the welfare of students and we feed our students five meals a day and that’s why these students love their school,” he noted.
“We have made sure that every student performs well in class and the parents have seen some changes on the academic performance of their children. We now have trust from the community. We admit students according to discipline and academic performance, we are now on a higher level and we give thanks to Lord as we see the fruits we are reaping because of the grace of the Lord,” said Moses Kangante one of the deputy head teacher.
“We have hope that if our candidates of this year perform very well, next year we shall be with over 2000 students because our students are well disciplined, because our students fear the Lord, we no longer have escapism in school, disrespecting teachers, we no longer have strikes here and this tells how the discipline of the students has improved and the community has appreciated,” he added. End.
