Meet Nyang’acha, man who served as head teacher at girl’s School

By Erick Nyayiera

It is the norm that almost all girls schools in the country are run by female head teachers but Ugenya Boys High School Senior Principal Clement Nyang’acha has challenged the established order in his long teaching career.

It happened in 2002 when he was the Deputy Principal at Isena Mixed Secondary School in Kisii County, when the local community noticed his good work in helping his Principal initiate rich academic programs.

The mixed school was performing very well in academics, making the community come up with the idea of establishing a girls Secondary School.

To realize the idea, they insisted that he was best placed to steer the initiative of establishing the school that would take care of the education needs of the many girls from the region who travelled long distances to look for schools.

So the community through their leaders including the Isena Mixed Secondary School Board Chairman donated land and a church compound for the establishment of the proposed Isena Mission Girls Secondary School.

He says the 20 months that he served as the Deputy of Isena Mixed Secondary School was so pivotal because he ensured good academic programs were in place.

“I wanted the girls too to be in school and I didn’t condone issues of teenage pregnancies and them girl dropping out of school and also made sure that the girls performed just well as the boys,” states Nyang’acha.

After all processes had been followed, the Ministry of Education okayed the establishment of the school and he was posted to be the Principal of the girls school.

“I reported and began from rickety church structures which had a dilapidated hall and a kitchen which was turned into my office,” he recounts, adding that he started from scratch when eight students joined Form 1 in 2004.

By the end of the year the school had registered 60 students across all classes to form four helping him to save over Sh200,000 from the small population to built a laboratory.

 They also received Sh130,000 from a fundraiser, as the girls continues studying from the church in partitioned corridors.

Nyang’acha’s stint as Mr. “Headmistress” would see him rescue girls who had fallen prey to predators, in one instance tracking  a school girl to Nairobi where he managed to arrest the culprit who was later jailed.

He carried out key infrastructural developments and improved academic performance during his seven year stay at the school and left when the population had increased to 220 girls.

They included 150 boarders and over 70 girls who are day scholars before a substantive female Principal was posted to the school in 2007.

He would later move to Rigena Mixed Secondary where he did a good work before heading to Sameta High and then Ugenya Boys High School..

At Ugenya, his daily routine  begins at begins at 3:00 am when he conducts early morning lessons before embarking on administrative duties at dawn to ensure students are ready for break breakfast.

As the students head for breakfast, he moves to his office ready for the ever busy administrative work that would eat the rest of his day.

His proven leadership track record has seen him create meaningful and positive impact in all his former stations.

Nyang’acha was posted to Ugenya, a County school in 2018 that had just been started in 2010 by the then Ugenya MP James Orengo, who is now serving as the Senator.

Since taking over, Nyang’acha has steered the school into one of the best performing institutions in Siaya County and the entire Nyanza Region in successive Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exams results.

He had earlier served as the Senior Principal of Sameta High School, an established Extra- County school in Kisii County, where he improved its discipline record.

“The school had witnessed cases of arson attacks that saw the student numbers reduce tremendously but I changed it to a School of choice in the Kisii County that performed well through my open-door policy management approach,” says Nyang’acha.

He says TSC made an error when they transferred him to Ugenya High School, which appeared to be a demotion because he was already was a Senior Principal from 2011 and was supposed to be moved to another Extra- County.

But unlike his colleagues who also got erroneous transfers and camped at the Commission headquarters to complain and were later reassigned to new stations, he headed straight to his new station and faced the challenges head on.

“Today the school is a success story and our hard work has enabled it to be upgraded to Extra- County status,” Nyang’acha stated, adding that he operates an open door policy which makes him address issues properly and give satisfying solutions.