St Mark’s School

History

St Mark’s is a co-educational school that opened in January 2007 with 7 classrooms with the aim of supporting local orphans into education and providing a quality private education for fee paying children. Primary education is technically free in Uganda but parents must still provide and pay for Uniform and books so this inevitably excludes many. In addition we can provide smaller class sizes of children which helps provide a better standard of education.

We also sponsor some children that have the ability to progress to secondary education. In 2026 we have 22 students we are sponsoring at secondary level. Uganda as a whole sees only 1 in 4 students progress to this stage of their education.

Orphans

About 50% of the population of Uganda under the age of 15, compare to approximately 18% in the UK. In Uganda if you are without one of your parents then you have orphan status due to the disadvantage that this gives you. AAD wants to change the lives of many children who have suffered the lost of one or both of their parents by giving them access to a good quality education.

St Mark’s school currently educates approximately 160 orphans, about 1/4 of the pupils that attend. Sponsorship of orphans provides them with not only an education but also a uniform, shoes, porridge for breakfast and beans and posho (posho is a bit like eating playdoh!) for lunch.

If you would like to enquire about sponsoring an orphan email us on aaduganda@gmail.com. The cost for sponsoring a child is £15 per month.

Our Staff

St Mark’s is well led by Head Teacher Baluku Elisha. He is supported by a teaching team of 16 teachers, many of whom have served at St Mark’s for a number of years.

Most of our teachers are committed Christians and the school has a strong Christian Ethos. The whole school enjoy Chapel Worship twice a week!

We also have a number of support staff including a school cook who feeds 160 hungry mouths every day - no mean feat! And a school caretaker who keeps the premises well looked after.

The Future

In 2022 we completed a large multi-purpose hall for the pupils to have meals, exams and chapel together. It is also used for the Bible College Training. We anticipate to be able to serve the wider community with this resource too.

We want to continue with our mission to provide good quality education, particularly to those who may otherwise be excluded due to lack of finance.