Mother of all TCE reunions
OVER 345 alumni and 47 lecturers from the former Transvaal College of Education (TCE) spanning 44 years – from 1954 to 1998 – will converge at the Nirvana Secondary School in Lenasia on Friday for the “mother of all reunions”.
For the past few months the reunion committee have been working tirelessly to reach graduates who have settled in various parts of South Africa and around the globe.
The TCE had a colourful history and has produced excellent teachers, some of whom left the profession and joined the private and public sector holding senior positions.
The TCE started in 1954 at the then Johannesburg Indian High School at the corner of Bree and Burghersdorp Streets in Fordsburg a suburb of Johannesburg.
Up to 1954 Indian teachers in the then Transvaal were trained with coloured teachers at the Eurafrican Training Centre in Johannesburg.
The college started with an enrolment of 98 students studying towards the Transvaal Lower Diploma – a two-year course following a Standard 8 certificate.
There were eight staff members, who were responsible for 45 students qualifying to teach with a lower diploma.
In 1958, 67 students qualified. Over the years the need for properly trained secondary school teachers became pressing. In 1961 the first group of students were enrolled for the three-year Transvaal Lower Secondary Teachers Diploma with specialisation in secondary school subjects.
A similar three-year diploma was still offered for primary school teachers.
Owing to competition from the business sector, the number of students applying for teacher education in the Transvaal dropped to such an extent that only 34 first-year students from the Transvaal enrolled at the college. This low number had to be supplemented by students from Natal.
The importation of students from Natal brought with it many problems. First, accommodation had become a problem. Some of these students were welcomed but others were exploited by unscrupulous landlords who saw in them an opportunity for making money.
The dire need for hostels increased as the number of Natal students increased.
The bursaries the students received from the government were only enough for accommodation and they had to rely on their parents back home for financial support.
Furthermore, studying in the Transvaal and then being appointed to teach in schools in the same province meant being separated from family and loved ones for long periods.
For a long time the staff and students were unhappy with the appellation “training institute” and the ethnic tag it dragged along. What made the situation worse was the fact that the college was commonly known as “Fordsburg College”.
In 1969 the name of the training institute was officially changed to Transvaal College of Education. It is a name of which the teaching fraternity in the Transvaal have become proud. The change in name was accompanied by the change of the college’s motto: “Education Wecures Progress”, which was coined by Mr H du B Kemp, a popular lecturer who later became the rector of the college.
Over the years a number of new courses were introduced to meet the teaching needs of a changing society.
On January 22, 1982, the long wait for a proper college campus with hostel facilities was over. The year started with an enrolment of 377 students at the new campus in Laudium. About 87 students were accommodated at the hostel.
In 1983 Dr Chris Soobiah was the first person of colour to be appointed as the rector of the Transvaal College of Education.
During the rectorship of Dr Soobiah the duration of the courses was changed from three to four years.
The first students following the Higher Education Diploma were admitted in 1985.
Soobiah played a prominent role in the formalising of ties with the University of South Africa (Unisa) and the preparatory work for the establishment of a College Council and College Senate.
One of the main contributions of the council was the transformation of the college to admit students of different races. In 1998 the composition of the student body was about 50% Indian and 50% black and coloured. The role of the senate was to ensure high academic and professional standards. This was achieved with the assistance of Unisa.
The role of the former House of Delegates in the functioning of the TCE terminated soon after the 1994 democratic elections.
The newly constituted Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) soon made its presence felt. Gauteng had nine preservice colleges of education, which resulted in an oversupply of teachers.
The GDE thus embarked on a rationalisation process reducing the nine colleges to four. Unfortunately the TCE did not survive the process.
This esteemed and colourful institution closed its doors at the end of 1998 after having trained teachers for 45 years.
During this time 4034 students were admitted with about 3 600 placed in classrooms throughout the country and tasked with the role of moulding pupils into leaders.
The reunion aims to rekindle the spirit of the TCE and to cherish old memories.
Apart from the enjoyment of reuniting with friends, who now live all over the globe, the reunion will provide a great opportunity to follow their professional achievements and personal progress and the chance to relive some of the messy fun of college.
It may also provide an important networking opportunity to share best practices with the aim of improving the standard of education in South Africa. And maybe in case a TCE alumni is still single, they might even bump into their college crush and things which did not happen then may happen now.