A small girl in a striped jersey draws a picture in the sand. She is a grade R learner at Paulos Ngobeni Primary School in Zitha village, Acornhoek, Limpopo, where for the past 13 years learning has taken place under trees.
The school’s grade Rs are divided into three groups that take turns facing the sun and the wind.
Busisiwe Mathabela, a teacher who was teaching outside when the Teacher visited the school, says this has been going on since 1993. She says that when the weather gets bad, the teachers force learners into another classroom or simply send them home.
“Teaching under the trees means you are always at the mercy of the elements. Every day you pray things don’t get worse until you’ve finished teaching. But then again, you cannot be against nature,” says Mathabela.
The lack of proper roads and the dilapidated houses near the school also tell a tale of poverty. Most residents are not only illiterate, but also unemployed. As a result many learners are forced to leave school early. Those who pass matric face the struggle of raising money for tertiary education. Many end up joining the queue for menial, back-breaking jobs in the nearby farms.
The community sees education as the only way of breaking out of the cycle of hopelessness. And so in 1984, with money from their own pockets, and with their own labour, they built two modest brick blocks of classrooms.
Gaping cracks that crisscross the walls and floors give away the fact that the blocks were put together by lay hands. But whatever their condition, the school blocks remain a symbol of the community’s efforts to turn their situation around.
But, says principal Daphney Maluleke, the number of learners keeps growing beyond the school’s capacity. The school, which offers classes from grade R to grade seven, has a total enrolment of 812 learners, and has 24 teachers.
Maluleke says officials from the provincial education department have visited the school recently and promised to build 12 classrooms. “This was after the Department of Public Works declared the existing blocks unsafe for learners due to yawning cracks,” says Maluleke.
She is happy that new classrooms will be built, but is concerned that this may take time. “[The department] has not indicated when the construction is actually going to start,” she says.
Ndo Mangala, the Limpopo education department’s spokesperson, confirmed that the school will receive 12 classrooms during this financial year.
Asked when construction would begin, Mangala said: “Anytime from now. Public works is busy awarding the contract”.
He claimed that the province had long resolved the problem of children learning under trees, “with the exception of Tumelo Primary School in Mopani.”
In the meantime, Maluleke and her team are not going to sit back and wait for the government to deliver. They have been knocking on other doors, looking to raise funds. And this has borne fruit. During a confederation of principals’ meeting held last year in Cape Town, they secured a financial deal where a New Zealand-based school committed to fund the installation of flush toilets at the school.
Maluleke says that apart from lack of resources, the school struggles to deal with learners with special needs as her staff lacks experience to teach disabled learners and government support is poor.
Fortunately, the school won “inclusive and special needs education” and “life-time educator” awards at district level with R6 000 prize money last year.
Maluleke says the bulk of the money was used to drill a borehole, with the remainder used to “take care of other needs”.
The school has also set up a committee that plans intervention strategies on how to deal with problems related to poverty and HIV/Aids.