- He has already re-painted the school and expanded the principal’s office.
- He has a track record of upgrading schools academically and in infrastructure.
- Mr. Nyakweba is an OGW award winner.
Lawrence Nyakweba took the mantle to steer Dagoretti High School on May 16, 2022, convinced that he is equal to the task of becoming the school’s Chief Principal.
The school motto, Elimu ni Mali, a Kiswahili phrase that translates as Education is Wealth, strategically written on the school’s entrance, must have made a lot of sense to him, just as it does to the students therein.
He brought his thirty-two years of teaching experience to help this one of the capital city’s most prominent Extra-County schools achieve its vision— to be the top, all-round performing school.
Now being at the right place, he rolled his sleeves and kicked off his administrative roles to create a conducive environment for the learners and staff.
Dagoretti High School has 2031 students currently.
His first 100 days
That required him to begin by repairing the main amenities, such as the borehole, which had a problem with a lack of constant water flow.
The school previously relied on Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) for water.
“We used to do a subsidy through ordering water from the water boosters and then we pay instantly which was becoming very expensive for the school and this is not what the money was budgeted for,” Mr. Nyakweba said.
Noticing that the principal’s office was small and didn’t have a boardroom, he expanded it, including putting up better and new washrooms for the teaching staff.
In what he describes as his first hundred days at the institution, Mr. Nyakweba says that the fruits of his management skills did not go unnoticed.
For example, when former Comptroller of State House, Kinuthia Mbugua, who is also a former governor of Nakuru county, visited the school last year, he was so impressed that he gifted the school with a new bus as a reward for Mr. Nyakweba’s hard work.
Mr. Mbugua is an alumnus of Dagoretti High School, so it was easy for him to notice the developments done in the school where he was some years back.
He sponsored acquiring the KDG bus; now, the students have two buses for their out-of-school activities.
“He realized that I had put up a new basketball court, one among the few of its kind in East and Central Africa. It is designed with a carpet, classy to host international matches.
Mr. Mbugua also realized that I had painted the school administration block, forty classrooms and the dormitories within that short period,” he told Scholar Media Africa during an interview in his office.
Excellent track record
Mr. Nyakweba’s track record can better be told by his administrative work in the schools he has worked in previously.
A good example is Garissa Boys High School, a national school in Garissa county, North Eastern. This was the first national school he worked at.
“As I was leaving, the school mean score was 7.8, way from a mean score of 4.2 when I reported. The school was taking to university only 35 students but by the time I was leaving, we took 123 students to university; that was a record set,” he says of his achievements at Garissa high school.
His transfer to North Eastern in 2018 happened shortly after he was awarded a Chief Principal (D5) status, the last and highest grade a high school teacher can ever achieve in their teaching career, especially in administrative positions.
Mr. Nyakweba was awarded this job promotion title on July 1, 2017, after applying and attending an interview at the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) headquarters in Nairobi.
“I stayed in Garissa for four and a half years. I adjusted my working approaches to fit the situation as it were at that time and worked very successfully. Then I requested TSC to have me transferred to any other station to try me and my employer consented. I got a transfer letter into Dagoretti High School in May 9, 2022,” he says.
An OGW awardee
In the following days, Mr. Nyakweba continued his duties as usual. But one day, he received a call from Education Ministry headquarters informing him that he was among the special guests in the Jamhuri Day celebrations.
Not even the mention of the fact that Mr. Nyakweba’s seat would be arranged as one of the persons recognized by the head of state by the caller could convince him.
After the call, he told himself that if it were true, he would receive a written invite.
Unfortunately, with no written invite, he did not attend the occasion, one of the biggest ceremonies in which he was to be rewarded for his exemplary academic and administrative performance.
Though in absentia, he was awarded the Order of the Grand Warrior (OGW), an award by the head of state following one’s exemplary performance in different areas of service.
“I had heard rumors when some people came around to scrutinize my being here and my performance, and they also visited my former station to see what I had done.
Regarding infrastructure, I had built 18 new classrooms, 4 dormitories, a new computer lab, a modern library, a dining hall, and 22 washrooms in Garissa High School. So I may have received this award because of what I did in Garissa and partly what I did here when I came,” he says of his OGW accolade.
Even though he did not attend the ceremony in person, he was surprised to find his name among those in the Kenya Gazette of December 12, 2022.
“I believed it when people started calling me with congratulatory messages. Some sent me the caption on WhatsApp. It was true. I then got the whole of Kenya Gazette and read for myself,” Mr. Nyakweba, OGW, said with a smile.
Noticeable impact
With only nine months since his transfer to Dagoretti High School, the students are already feeling his presence in terms of discipline, academics, and co-curricular activities.
A case in point was last September when the school’s basketball team represented Kenya in the East and Central Africa games in Arusha, Tanzania.
The team is the current regional champion and is preparing to participate in their national basketball in Eldoret next month.
“My conscious is very clear; we have all it takes and we shall proceed and even take the boys to Kigali, Rwanda, later this year,” he says.
He says he is using the co-curricular activities to incorporate the new Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) system.
This way, he says, students can tap into other opportunities like education scholarships in the future, just like the many who have succeeded through their talents before.
Academic performance
Mr. Nyakweba says the school recorded an improvement in its mean score in the 2022 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination results and is now on the right trajectory toward excellence.
To have the school perform better in the next national examinations, he has set this year’s target mean at 7.5. The school is currently grooming a whopping 411 candidates for this year’s national examinations.
“It’s important to know where we are coming from, where we are, and where we are headed to. We cannot work in a vacuum; there must be some structured system on which to work upon.
Once you set the targets, you strive to achieve them; if you don’t achieve them, you review your strategies,” he explains.
Mr. Nyakweba is aided by three deputy principals, with Mr. Richard Ayieko handling the Academics docket, Mr. Charles Kingori taking care of Administration and Mr. Martin Masika handling Student Welfare.
A pact with the parents
He has also had several meetings with all his students’ parents and given them the school’s roadmap and the target set for every class.
According to him, parents are the most important stakeholders and for schools to record good results, teachers must involve them.
“There is no way I can set a target and achieve it without involving the parents. They provide infrastructural facilities and also support achieving curriculum delivery. They have to support educational matters,” says Mr. Nyakweba.
Steering the institution
Among the administrative tenets he says he has applied during his career include doing the Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis.
The Chief Principal says to be guided by inborn wisdom and the experience he has gained throughout his career.
As an administrator, he also seeks transformative leadership and remains highly professional.
This tenet, he says, has helped him avoid things that can contradict the TSC Code of Regulation and the Basic Education Act 2013.
He is also a staunch Seventh-Day Adventist.
He says his strong faith has seen him adhere to the rules and regulations set out by the Ministry of Education and the Kenya National Examinations Council Act.
Tracing his career
Mr. Nyakweba is a trained professional teacher. He teaches History and Business subjects. He has always taught History and was an examiner for History paper one for eleven years before becoming a team leader.
Due to his extensive administrative responsibilities, he stopped marking exams to focus on his administrative duties. He is married and a father of four children.
After graduating from the University of Nairobi’s Kenyatta Campus on January 14, 1990, he got posted to one of the country’s schools as an assistant teacher.
He only held this position for three years before being promoted to deputy principal. A year later, he was appointed Acting Principal of one of the schools in Kisii.
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That is where his administrative journey began in 1994. Currently, he is a Chief Principal.
MORE PHOTOS
True leadership will always reveal through what you are doing, will be recognized by others and will be reflected in performance improvement. Keep the good work, Chief Principal, Mr. Nyakweba.
The performance of a leader is judged by the impact left and the work done. Mr. Chief Principal Lawrence O. Nykweba OGW, you are worth and up to the task to make the great Dogoretti an international school. Proceed from the basketball court being an international court to make the entire school an international school. I believe in you. You can make it. Your principles are well spelled out. Congratulations sir.
Congratulations Mr. Nyakwenda. I’m longing to see my boy with an A.
This is a great change within less than a year. May the Lord grant you favor.
Congratulations Mwalimu. We look forward for a better Dagoretti and good performance for our boys
Having left that school six years ago looking the way it was and now seeing the photos in the article and the addition of the new bus,truly much has changed,continue with the good work.
Remarkable human!
This is quite encouraging. Congratulations Mr Nyakweba, as parents of the school we will support you. On a light note, I pray that our teachers will follow your example of hard work.
We need more “Nyakwebas” in Kenya. People that leave a mark of ‘brighter and better’.. the article is so well written out Tebby. Quite captivating and inspiring to read. Bravo!
Thanks so much for your feedbacks in the article.
It is good to read positive aspects that are being implemented at the school. As an alumni of the school I am impressed by what I read and see. My only other wish is to see you students be recognized academically. You all have done well in sports. It’s a high time Dichez can be in the same light as Lenana and Nairobi School. Well done keep the spirit. Hope to read from colleagues as well . I graduated from the institution in 1986.
We wish him well and it is my believe that 2023 examination results will be the best than previous years.
I am an old boy, and I wish we had this teacher in my years. We didn’t have enough teachers in the 90s, spend our days being destructive. We had a lorry for a school bus, and no uniforms while we played basketball. Only tinny yellow shirts no shorts until our last year when we got baby blue uniforms no coach’s for all our teams. We had a rough time, hope the boys take advantage and make Dagoretti high a beacon in the entire country. Hongera sana Mwalimu na ofisi yako na Mungu akubariki na akutie nguvu ya kuzidi uweze kufikia malengo yako yote.