Township school beats odds to get the results
Dilapidated and fire-hit, Qoqa Secondary makes list of three most improved
CRACKS and graffiti scar the wall behind principal Zakhele Tshabalala’s desk where he sits forlornly in a corner of a busy classroom at an isolated Qoqa Secondary School in Orange Farm.
The administration building where Tshabalala last occupied a corner office more than two years ago is derelict, with holes, protruding nails and a roof that has collapsed.
To the left of Tshabalala’s classroom office, which he shares with teachers, where the admin clerks process new pupil admissions, a spray of graffiti pleads to the “EFF Ninja” to stop the violence.
Last year the school was dealt a major blow when one disgruntled pupil set alight a block of classrooms after what Tshabalala believes was a “failed robbery”.
However, the principal appeared unfazed by all this on the second day of schools reopening this week.
“The losses due to the fire run to R400 000. It was devastating,” he recalled.
“All matric classrooms were burned down. The space we occupy is supposed to be a classroom, but we now have to share it as an office – all of us.
“We have a major challenge with infrastructure, but we are not dwelling on that.”
Yet this is a school that has become the toast of the Gauteng Department of Education after it emerged as one of the top three most improved priority schools in the province in last year’s matric results.
According to Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi, Qoqa is a model of how oncepoorly performing and declining independent schools can be tur ned around once they are converted into public schools.
“That school is now in the top three of most improved township schools in Gauteng,” Lesufi said.
“I am targeting the rest of the independent schools with the same view of converting them to public education. Those that are still performing well we will continue to support with resources.”
According to Lesufi, the provincial government spends on average about R3.6 million a year on every independent school.
“(The independent schools) have seven, eight and 15 pupils in matric. You can’t have a school with 15 matriculants,” he said.
“(The pupils) are not benefiting in independent schools. These schools had to exist because people thought this was the best way to protect their children, but the reality is we’ve got public education performing now.
“Let’s bring them back and persuade them the reason they left public education (is) no longer valid.”
This week, a team of Gauteng education officials wasdispatched to the poorly performing independent schools to put them through rigorous checks.
Lesufi said he wanted the pupils enrolled in some of the schools – no more than 2 000 – to return to the public education fold.
There were nearly 150 000 pupils at independent schools in the province, compared with 2.1 million in public education, he said.
At Qoqa Secondary, Tshabalala, who took the reins as headmaster at the start of its transition from private to public, hopes the school’s poor conditions will be improved soon.
He said the school, which achieved a matric pass rate of 90 percent last year, had come a long way from its days when it was plagued by gangsterism and could muster a pass rate of only 5 percent.
“I arrived here to begin the transition and it was difficult. We had to clean out the system completely and rid it of fraudulent reports for pupils,” Tshabalala said.
“We continue to work as a team and the teachers and parents here understand the vision of the school. We emerged out of the crisis we faced as a team, not individuals.”
Nearly 850 pupils were enrolled at the school last year and Tshabalala believes the numbers will grow this year.
To accommodate the expected influx, new mobile class rooms have been added.
“It doesn’t matter whether we sit in a fancy office or in the corner of a classroom,” said Tshabalala.
“We need to take these pupils out of a cycle of poverty – and education is the only way.
“In the first few years we battled to change the mindset of many pupils here, but now we have turned the corner.
“To be among the top three improved schools in the province is encouraging for us.”
We emerged out of the crisis we faced as a team, not individuals