A sense of high self esteem and confidence
Darnall: A small primary school with a big heart
MUCH water has passed under the bridge since 91-yearold Noel de St Pern travelled on a mule trap to Darnall Primary School, twice crossing the Nonoti River – figuratively speaking, because there was no bridge back then, just a shallow ford. The tiny school had only two classrooms with three grades being taught at the same time in each.
But fast forward to the present and Darnall Primary is celebrating its centenary year – and it is still a small school with only 185 pupils. Small in the sense that there is only one class for every grade, but powerful with community participation and dedication from teachers giving the state institution a sound reputation.
“We measure the standard of academics with the number of (high school) bursaries,” said principal Eugene Nel.
“Forty percent of our Grade 7s are offered bursaries.”
While De St Pern, a World War II veteran, is the school’s oldest living product, others who have followed him include Sharks medical head Glen Hagemann, a medical doctor, SA Schools hockey player Justin Galloway and JP Cilliers, Glenwood High School’s head boy of 2012.
Four generations of Hagemanns have passed through Darnall Primary, and among this year’s leavers is Bryce Tayler who is carrying his family’s name for a third generation.
“It’s quite surprising how well children from Darnall function at high school,” said past pupil Karen Tocknell, formerly Hagemann, a teacher whose career has been in the marketing side of education, and who sits on school boards.
“One would assume that coming from a small school they would be lost, but because of the sense of belonging there is a high sense of selfesteem and confidence. It’s an interesting phenomenon.”
She added: “There are also less discipline problems with this sense of belonging. There’s less bullying because of the community feel that everyone is part of the system.”
Teacher Nettie de Ricquebourg added that the school’s small size meant everyone participated in its activities “no matter whether they are high or average achievers”.
“It gives them courage. No matter who they are, they have to play for the teams.”
Sugar is the reason for Darnall’s existence.
“At the end of 1914, some of the parents of the Darnall district gave notice to the headmaster at Stanger School that they would be withdrawing their children from the school because of the unsatisfactory train service,” teacher Robyn Livingstone wrote in the school’s centenary magazine.
When Darnall Primary started at its first location on a hilltop close to the present school, most children walked to school, she wrote.
“But little Dorothy Stewart of Sinkwazi Park arrived in a cart drawn by a king-size white billy goat. All the other children envied her.”
In the centenary magazine is a 1930 newspaper cutting announcing a fancy dress dance to raise money for a gramophone. It is now among the exhibits in the museum section of the school library.
The grounds are peppered with plaques announcing Grade 7 fundraising achievements, the latest being the centenary bell.
“Each year they leave behind something for the next years’ pupils to use,” said school secretary Sue Stone, whose own children also attended Darnall Primary.
“It gets quite emotional.”
Matching the greenery of the surrounding sugar fields are vast areas of green carpeting around the school.
“It’s astroturf from the Queensmead hockey grounds,” explained principal Nel. It came to Darnall Primary after a mudslide at Queensmead and an insurance claim.
A bit of it went into the new cricket pitch, put together with the help of a parent who offered the school the use of a heavy mechanical compressor.
Another innovation is a piece of piping that is an offcut from concrete piping that Umgeni Water has installed to bring extra water into Hazelmere Dam from the lower reaches of the Thukela River.
This legacy of the current drought is the latest hit to play in for children from the Sunshine Pre-Primary School, which became part of Darnall Primary in 2010.
The effects of extreme weather are reflected in the school records that show how attendance dropped during tropical storm Demoina in 1984, Nel remarked.
Half a century before Demoina, old man St Pern remembers when there was high water and the Nonoti was in flood.
“We couldn’t get across in our mule trap so there would be no school for the day.”