First impressions of St Andrew’s College in the Eastern Cape could confirm negative assumptions about independent schools. With its handsome stone buildings and lush grounds, the all-boy school appears to embody the dubious values reserved for the rich: exclusivity, privilege and snobbery.
But first impressions can be misleading. Although you definitely need to be rich to go there (tuition for the higher grades alone is R46 080 a year), St Andrews plays an active part in the town’s broader learning community.
The school was founded in 1855 on St Andrew’s Day by John Armstrong, the first bishop of Grahamstown, to ‘provide a sound Christian education” to the sons of Eastern Cape settlers. Its survival, says principal David Wylde, is testiment to a cornerstone philosophy of the school: the ability to innovate. Back in the 1880s, St Andrew’s taught printing and journalism. Educated at what was then called the ‘native branch”, sons of black missionaries cut their teeth as journalists and intellectuals. The editors of the African National Congress’s first newspaper, Abantu Batho, were among them.
But survival has also been about making compromises. In 1907, as white racism hardened and government policy formalised segregation, black learners were moved to St Matthew’s Mission in Keiskammahoek. Decades later in 1979 St Andrew’s became one of the first independent schools to accept pupils of other races.
As small as Grahamstown is, it has a large number of schools and educational institutions in which St Andrew’s features prominently. The college enjoys a close relationship with its sister school, the independent Diocesan School for Girls, and has recently renewed its historic association with St Matthew’s.
The college also has a deep historical link with Rhodes University. Until 1904, the St Andrew’s College fulfilled a dual function, that of a school and a ‘college”, in which young men were prepared for university examinations. Rhodes University College was born when five masters from St Andrew’s moved the ‘college department” to a cottage across the road. From this humble beginning, Rhodes has become a premier South African university.
This sense of community is not incidental to the education St Andrew’s provides its boys. Says Wylde, ‘”If you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, at the bottom of the pyramid is food, your most basic need, then you get a sense of belonging, and right at the top the need to fulfil a sense of self esteem. The successes that our boys enjoy stem from our promotion of a high self-esteem, which leads to both awareness of community and independence.”