The community of an Eastern Cape school have worked miracles, writes Janette Bennett
You won’t know you have found Sandi Senior Secondary School. There is no sign at the gate, and it looks like any other school in the deepest rural areas of South Africa.
Like the others, Sandi, perched on a hill with a spectacular view over the Pondoland coast, consists of a string of classrooms provided by the government and a rough addition being built by parents at a pace dictated by their sporadic income.
Inside, things are different. In an air of quiet orderliness and passionate learning, the teachers, learners and parents have achieved what some would call a miracle. In 1997, Sandi’s matric pass rate was 3,3%. Last year it reached 93%.
Although that is spectacular, Sandi’s 24-year-old principal, Bongi Peyana, and his team of 12 teachers have a bigger goal for this year. They are going after matric exemptions, elusive so far, so that their learners can go on to university. Their target is for 40% of the 195 grade twelves to earn exemptions.
That is where the difference from most other rural schools ends. Sandi, too, has no electricity, running water or telephones. It, too, is plagued by no, or very few, textbooks.
Sandi, too, has huge classes. With 584 learners, the pupil-teacher ratio is 48:1. Up to 90 children cram into some classes. Some sit on concrete blocks; some bring chairs from home.
As the school’s good results rose, so did the demand for places. It had 65 learners in 1996; now it turns away almost 1 000 applicants each year.
Most of Sandi’s learners rely on income from an elderly relative’s pension.
“We don’t have a single resource – just human resources,” Peyana says, without a hint of bitterness. In fact, he smiles. “Why complain? We use whatever is at our disposal. Our mission is to deliver, not to sit around and complain and do nothing.
“Yes, we have done something good here, but it has not been an individual thing. Everybody – the teachers, the pupils, the parents – has played a part.”
Their secret is sheer determination and hard work. Sandi is a story of the triumph of the human spirit over seemingly impossible odds.
As Eastern Cape MEC for Education Stone Sizani says: “You can have poverty and excellence if the teachers, as a team, are determined to beat the odds – if they work with each other to fill in gaps in skills.”
The quality of teachers, Sizani stresses, is the crucial factor. He names several well-resourced schools which have delivered very poor results.
“Schools can have everything, except quality teachers, and they will fail. Sandi has very little in the way of resources, but it’s succeeding because it has good teachers,” he says. Peyana puts it another way: “The lack of resources gives my teachers a chance to show how good they are.”
Teachers go way beyond conventional duty. They double up their roles and assist each other, as needed. Peyana, for instance, is also Sandi’s history and English teacher, and it’s quite likely you’ll find him photocopying geography notes at times.
To make sure all learners receive attention, Sandi has classes on alternate weekends, during the evenings – some of the precious school fees paid for a generator – and over school holidays. During the three-week break in June, Sandi closed for just one week.
The teachers create solutions. Maths and science teacher Les Mkhonza, for instance, bought one of each required textbook when it became clear they were not going to arrive through official channels. He photocopies relevant pages from the textbooks in Umtata -about 40km away, and where most of the teachers live – to hand out to learners.
Without a laboratory, he makes use of videos (now feasible with the availability of a generator), pausing them to ask and answer questions.
Mkhonza came to Sandi via his studies at the University of Transkei. It was there that he met Peyana, who asked him to teach at Sandi. “I planned to do it for just a few months … that was in 1997. I like the atmosphere here,” he says.
The teachers are excellent role-models. Rain or shine, they bounce along the bumpy gravel road to school. And they are punctual.
Learner absenteeism is no longer a factor at Sandi. “If the pupils see the teacher is serious about learning, they will be led in the right direction,” Peyana says.
He grew up further inland, in Mount Frere, and has devoted his working life to Sandi. He joined in 1996, when Sandi was a year old.
What parents lack in literacy they make up for 100-fold in support. It was parents who insisted, in 1995, that the school offer maths and science. Sandi is now one of the 100 poor, but successful, high schools that the national Department of Education intends to develop into maths and science centres of excellence.
The walls of Peyana’s small office are covered with several merit awards from the provincial Department of Education. The latest addition is the special science award it received in February from Minister of Education Kader Asmal in the category of consistently improving schools. So, Sandi is recognised by the authorities. But as Sizani points out, it is one of many under-resourced schools.
Sizani has inherited the legacy of decades of deliberate neglect, and education workers will tell you there are many schools which have even fewer resources than Sandi. His department’s approach is four-fold: to improve the quality of teachers, to ensure books arrive on time, to ensure schools have the support of the department, and to facilitate the role of communities in raising funds and maintaining buildings.
As the Sandi community amply shows, the impossible can become reality. “We know people are watching us now,” Peyana says. “We can’t disappoint them, and we definitely can’t disappoint our pupils and parents.”
– The Teacher/M&G Media, Johannesburg, September 2001.