Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Primary education in our local community: Exasperating!
Recently Micah6 has tried to pursue a course of
action to intervene in the life of a little young girl from Cato Crest Primary
School (and younger sister of one of our currently sponsored learners). Our
action plan is to get her into a better school for the following reason: Four years
since our first cohort of sponsored learners entered high school, it is clear that they have
been unfairly served at the foundation phase level. For these children who all
schooled at Cato Crest Primary, basic groundwork never took place and their
high school progression rests on very shaky foundations. As a result we have involved ourselves in the business of patch work. Maximising a child’s
potential must happen at the primary school level.
Our new little candidate is entering grade
4 next year and we thought we take some action to get her accepted into a great little state school around the corner. With an initial inquest into the school's application process,
we have already been turned down for two reasons i) the school is inundated
with admission requests at the grade 4 level (understandably) and ii) she will not be able to
cope: She has come from Cato Crest Primary where Zulu is the ‘de facto’ medium
of instruction and mathematics foundations are just inadequately prepared. An
absurd suggestion was then given by the admission secretary that she complete
her primary education at Cato Crest Primary – the very place where she will
continue to receive ‘blunt’ instruction. She will become part of yet another
cohort of children we have engaged with from Cato Crest Primary whose life
opportunities by the age of 13 have already been seriously comprised. In reaction we have even suggested that she be
admitted at the grade 3 level but repeat a grade to address conceptual gaps.
This is apparently impossible under DOE rules.
At present we are left with one remaining
possibility: provide this little girl with access to extra lessons most
afternoons of her school week to fill in the gaps of an inadequate education
received during the day. Once we have paid for extra lessons and transport
costs, this option will be considerably more expensive than R14,000 in fees for
the year at the good school around the corner and just seems a ridiculous notion. The obvious
long-term solution is to fix Cato Crest Primary – not impossible but very difficult and a long process!
At this point what is clear is that despite
concerted efforts and available funding, it is just very difficult to help even one
life in the presence of a dysfunctional education system. The Cato Crest
Primary Schools of this country are silent predators eating away at the
potential of thousands of young South African lives.
