Help for troubled school
Volunteer hopes maths lessons will add up to improved pass rate
APASSION for teaching plus 23 years’ experience in maths education could add up to a vastly improved matric pass rate at one of Nelson Mandela Bay’s worst performing schools. For retired maths teacher Mark Baartman, 50, it was this equation, plus an inspirational book on helping others and a Herald report on the dismal 2016 matric pass rate at New Brighton’s Thubelihle High School that inspired his decision to offer free maths lessons for pupils in grade 10 and 12 at the troubled school.
Baartman, who lives in the Port Elizabeth suburb of Hillside, is now applying his eight years of teaching and 15 years of maths tutoring experience to assist pupils at the school, which suffered a 3.2% (two out of 73 pupils) pass rate for the recent matric exams.
He said this week that while he had been inspired by a book about assisting others, it was a report in The Herald about the school which had prompted him to offer his assistance.
“When I read about Thubelihle, I was shocked and I felt critical of the teachers and children,” he said.
“But, having been a teacher, I began feeling that there must be other reasons for such a terrible outcome.”
Although Thubelihle had not been the first school he had approached to offer his assistance, he had always had his sights set on the school, he said.
“Just seeing the relief on the principal’s face was reason enough to go back.
“And seeing how much my small gesture meant to him made me want to stay,” the former Sanctor, St Thomas and Chapman high schools teacher said. He plans to use new methods such as rock music in the classroom to jar the pupils awake.
The school has since started providing daily extra lessons for the Grade 12 class, where Baartman assists when he is not teaching his Grade 10 pupils.
The dismal results at Thubelihle sent shockwaves through the community and compelled a group of former pupils to rally together in a bid to assist the institution.
A pupil in the class of 1996, Buqaqawuli Mrwetyana, 38, said the group of more than 10 former pupils were still busy with a consultative process towards starting to assist pupils there, and that various task teams had been set up.
“We have identified many socioeconomic factors, from the rate of unemployment in the townships to the fact that many parents are very young,” Mrwetyana said.
“And because we understand the need for parents to be involved, we have been meeting with them.
“We have also been working very closely with teachers to come up with curriculum redevelopment programmes.”
He said he was concerned that tutoring by the group had not begun.
Provincial Education MEC Mandla Makupula was yet to meet with the group after he backed out of a meeting last week, Mrwetyana said.
School principal Mandla Toba said the involvement of the community had given him hope for a better outcome this year.
“We feel very honoured and we hope that things will change for the better, especially in mathematics as that is a killer subject,” Toba said.
“Mr Baartman is making a big difference and we appreciate his help,” he said.