With the nation’s unemployment rates hovering around the 40% mark, learning
institutions have their work cut out for them to give their learners a shot at becoming active in the economy.
One independent school that believes it has the right recipe for its learners is Maragon (meaning ‘pearl” in Greek), based in Ruimsig, west of Johannesburg. It first opened its doors to learners from Grade 00 to Grade 11 in 2000, and introduced its first matric class last year. Its enrolment has grown to close to 800 learners, with a teaching staff of 50.
The key, says principal Richard Kieck, is that, ‘it does not matter how you equip yourself with skills. If you don’t market yourself you will go nowhere”.
‘At Maragon, learners are taught to be mature, self-confident and how to project themselves,” he says. ‘We focus not on how many [learners] pass matric, but the quality of their pass.”
Kieck contrasts this with the usual preoccupation with pass rates. ‘So many schools focus on the results and forget the child. In other words, children become the means to an end.”
Besides a particular emphasis on certain priority areas, such as marketing, management and leadership skills, the school has a ‘carrot and stick” strategy meant to get the best out of everyone.
Through a bonus-point system, different grades compete against one another for excellence in areas such as cleanliness and discipline. A grade that accumulates most points wins a ‘grade-appropriate prize”. For instance, a class in the high school may take a one-day educational trip, while juniors would be entitled to a treat at a restaurant.
‘Reward and acknowledgement” is another strategy to encourage excellence.
‘Achievement is measured in terms of good performance in five educational pillars: academic, cultural, sporting, community service and leadership. If any of the grades does well in at least three of these areas, it is awarded school colours and earns the right to wear a special blazer with its own badges and branding,” says Kieck.
When learners do get it wrong, the school tries to encourage the view that mistakes are there to be learnt from. ‘Unlike other schools that treat failure as a horrible thing, we see it as an opportunity to do things another way and we try to instil this sense in our learners,” Kieck says.
But for all the feel-good strategies, discipline features prominently in Maragon’s approach. For instance, ‘an aberrant behaviour”, such as a violation of a code of conduct, is remedied through a community-service intervention. Culprits are made to clean windows, desks, trophies and the like. Transgressions of an academic nature, such as not doing classwork and assignments, result in supervised detention after school hours.
To groom and promote leadership values and qualities in learners, the school uses a dual system of prefects and a learner Representative council (LRC). ‘The LRC acts as class representatives – they are more like the mouthpiece of children in each class,” says Kieck.
The prefects, on the other hand, concern themselves with governance-related issues. ‘They are part of the LRC, but deal more with issues of management, like enforcing discipline, monitoring adherence to school uniform and punctuality. In other words, they service their colleagues,” he says. But in carrying out these duties, ‘learners do not behave or act in a dictatorial manner”.
But the quality on offer at this independent school doesn’t come cheap: parents have to fork out between R15 000 and R30 000 for an education they hope will give their children an edge in a competitive world.