Farm school to be turned in to ‘tree of knowledge’

A FARM school that opened almost 100 years ago is set to undergo an extreme makeover costing millions of rand – and when it is done children will be learning under a tree.

But this is no ordinary tree: they will be sitting under “tree-of-knowledge columns” in a “discovery centre” while using multimedia equipment in an audio-visual area lined with books.

It’s all thanks to a good Samaritan who is ploughing in the money to change the lives of 120 farmworkers’ children in the Western Cape’s Breede River Valley.

He insists on remaining anonymous. The cost of the makeover has not been made public, but the contribution to the farming community is so generous that education MEC Debbie Schäfer mentioned it in her budget speech last month. This week, ward councillor Cornelius Lottering said work had already begun at Botha’s Halte Primary School.

The department told Times Select the modest school on private farmland will get an auditorium-type multipurpose hall, three specialist classrooms with sewing machines, handwork and woodwork equipment, musical instruments and a state-of-the-art science laboratory. Outside there will be two astroturf play areas, spectator seating, indigenously planted roofs and vegetable gardens.

“The buildings will operate largely off the electrical grid, with solar and wind-generator capacity included as part of the project. These aspects will also be clearly demonstrated to pupils via interactive displays throughout the school,” the department said.

“Due to water scarcity and the general arid nature of this part of the valley, rainwater and stormwater is harvested and stored in a large reservoir under the school buildings, from where the school grounds are then irrigated.

The reservoir is topped up by a borehole as well as the clean, treated effluent from the sewerage package plant.”

Lottering said the school was started by the Dutch Reformed Church in the 1920s.