Uganda

Maharishi Secondary School for Girls, Mbale

The school opened as a Junior Secondary School in 2009. By 2013 the student body had grown to 85 students from Uganda and Kenya, and in the same year the school gained full accreditation as a Senior Secondary School.

The school is becoming well known for the orderly behaviour of its students. For three years running, the Maharishi School girls have been chosen to represent all the local girls’ schools at the International Women’s Day celebration in Mbale.

In the Uganda National exams the school is demonstrating once again the effectiveness of Consciousness-Based Education: even students who arrive with a low level of achievement in primary school become able to pass their “O” level exams. This is remarkable in Uganda, where secondary achievement levels usually mirror primary results.

As part of the Consciousness-Based educational system, all teachers and students practise the Transcendental Meditation technique at school twice a day, before and after classes.

Students at Maharishi School practise Transcendental Meditation as part of the school curriculum. Outcomes of this programme include higher grades, increased focus and memory, greater teamwork, and social harmony.

Construction of new dormitories and classrooms will allow increased student enrolment.

EDAPO Primary School

The Economic Development and AIDS Prevention Organization (EDAPO) in Central Uganda has used the Transcendental Meditation technique to create more hopeful outcomes for some of the 600 HIV/AIDS orphans it supports.

150 of the orphaned children, together with their foster parents, have learned the Transcendental Meditation technique. The result has been a positive transformation in the emotional outlook of the children and in their performance at school. EDAPO has since started its own primary school, where 120 children practise the technique twice a day.

About 50 of the children under ten practise a special “walking meditation” technique designed for younger children. The primary school is unusually orderly — when the children first learned the Transcendental Meditation technique, the area became so quiet that neighbours came by to see whether the school had moved.